The Heart of the Sun
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: HPSS slash. Harry and Severus accidentally enacted a handfasting at last year's Beltane ceremony. Now, nearly a year and a day later, Harry looks back over the past year, and wonders about its ending. COMPLETE.


**Title**: The Heart of the Sun

**Pairing**: Severus-Harry

**Rating**: R

**Warnings**: Angst, unexpected handfasting, intertwined timelines, traditions and rituals I made up and which are not meant to imply anything about real traditions

**Word count**: 26,000

**Summary**: Harry and Severus unexpectedly enacted a handfasting ceremony at last year's Beltane. Now, nearly a year and a day later, as Harry prepares for the next Beltane celebration at Godric's Hollow, he remembers their procession through the holidays of the sun—and wonders about its ending.

**Disclaimer**: Characters are the property of JK Rowling, et al. This was created for fun, not for profit.

**Betaed by**: Linda. Who rocks.

**Author's Note**: This was written in the 2014 hds_beltane fest for sassy_cat. I used her special requests for rituals, outdoor sex, unusual vocations, and happy endings, and her prompt of _Handfasted!? But I thought… (Or when a plan to get easy and free sex turns out not to be easy or free)_.

**The Heart of the Sun**

**Beltane Eve, 2005**

Harry crouched down near the pile of sticks and eyed them. Then he nodded and straightened up. He would have a hard time convincing anyone that the pile wasn't already perfect. Anyway, he didn't know what he would do to improve it.

He bit his lip and glanced across the sloping meadow behind his house. There were piles of sticks everywhere, and a few of the stone hearths that Hermione said were "more traditional." Harry shook his head decisively. He and Hermione had argued about that, but Hermione had pulled out the trump card of all the many, many things Harry didn't know about Beltane.

_Hard to argue with that, given what happened last year._

Harry skimmed lightly around the thought, and glanced at the clusters of green and white and golden ribbons hanging in the trees. Green for new growth, white for the may blossoms, gold for the colors of fire. Or something. Harry had to admit he had tuned out when Hermione started talking about the ribbons. He knew that she thought them essential to the success of this year's ceremony, even though technically tonight was only Beltane Eve and a private little ritual with the kids, and tomorrow was actually Beltane, and that was all he needed to know.

The success of this year's ceremony would be the _end _of last year's.

_Right_.

Harry turned away abruptly from the meadow and walked back into the house. He had to check on the guests' drinks. There was the Firewhisky that was essential for Ron to have a good time, and the butterbeer that was all they could let George drink nowadays, and the special, watered-down butterbeer that Teddy liked and Andromeda drank along with him, and the pure spring water that was symbolic enough of Beltane for Hermione that she wanted to have it on hand, and, oh, all sorts of other things.

Harry's hand lingered on the bottles of Firewhisky before he stepped back. He wouldn't start drinking, yet.

Or maybe not at all. Maybe it wouldn't be necessary.

Harry made one final round of the kitchen, and then stepped into the drawing room. He stood there, slowly looking about. He had chosen not to rebuild his parents' house after all when he moved to Godric's Hollow, although that had been his first intention. But then he had decided that was a bit strange, to live in the place where his parents had died, and he would prefer to go ahead and set up a home of his own.

The house didn't look the way it had a year ago, either. The green carpet that Harry had chosen for this room was darkened in a few places by what could have been splotches of wine, but weren't. The small table beside the couch had a scar on it where a foaming cauldron had spilled. There was even an indentation in the leather of the couch where someone taller than Harry had spent hours sitting and reading. And there were Potions journals on all the shelves of the bookcase.

Harry swallowed. Then he gave in, and bent down to touch his nose to the leather of the couch, and the long, half-ragged blanket that hung over the back of it.

There was a smell there, not a smell that he could easily define, since he had stubbornly resisted all of Severus's efforts to educate him on Potions ingredients, but a noticeable one, spicy and salty and overlayered with olives.

Harry rose to his feet, swallowing again. He didn't want things to change.

But a year was enough to be handfasted, really, if it wasn't enough to teach him to know Severus's mind.

Harry turned and went back outside. He thought he had seen a clump of ribbons hanging crookedly. Intense concentration on small things could sometimes block unwanted memories. He ought to know.

**Beltane, 2004**

"No, Potter."

Harry halted. He had been dancing, half-dancing, up to Snape, with his whole body feeling as if it was glowing, and now he could sure _feel _his face glowing, but for a different reason. He took a step back, staring at Snape. Snape, his face changed and softened by the flames of the fire playing across it—but not enough—stared back at him, and clutched the neck of the flask he held as if he was going to smash it into Harry's forehead.

"Fine," Harry said. His tongue was thick in his mouth, the sweetness of Beltane and the fire and laughter and seeing people acting free and happy curdled on it. "I should have known you were still like this." He turned to walk away.

Unexpectedly, Snape's hand caught him and dragged him backwards, and Harry was sad enough to revel in that, half-closing his eyes.

"Like _what_, Potter?" Snape hissed, close to his ear, his eyes darting around as if afraid that someone would see him committing the ultimate sin of speaking with Harry Potter.

"That you were still joyless and cramped-up and unhappy," said Harry. He hadn't meant to say those words. He had come up and invited Snape to jump across the fire with him, and sleep with him, because he _wanted _to, and the desire flowing through him had needed to be shared. But he could mean a different thing if he was refused. "You don't want to take a risk. You don't ever want to think that I could change my mind about you. I mean, fine. But _you're _the one who won't take the risk." He pulled his shoulder away from Snape's hand.

"You have no idea what you're asking me."

Harry turned around and stared at Snape again. Snape was still cradling the flask, but now he glared at it as if it and not Harry had caused all those problems.

"Yes, I do," Harry said. There was still a lingering tug of warmth in the bottom of his stomach, he discovered, the heat that rekindled as he looked at Snape's lean limbs and long face. So, all right, he didn't think Snape was the handsomest bloke ever and there was part of Harry that wanted to sleep with him just because he was curious and it was something he wouldn't do on any other night, but so what? "I know what sex means, and I know what Beltane means, and I wanted to do both with you."

Snape was the one flushed now, although it was curiously hard to see. Harry had always thought of his complex as sallow, not ruddy, but the blush only changed it a little. He set the flask aside and told Harry, "Beltane is supposed to be a time of joy."

"Which I wanted to share, you paranoid bastard." Harry rolled his eyes. He thought about walking away, but this conversation was better than the blunt "No" he'd got the first time, so he stayed. "That's all it is. Yeah, I know Beltane is a joyous time. Thought I'd spread it around. I didn't know I'd get accused of—of still being a Gryffindor." He thought that was behind the fixed expression Snape had used. "Anyway. I'll just go. Enjoy your evening."

"Wait."

"You really like that word, don't you?" Harry asked, but he didn't move.

"This is the first time I have said it." Snape stood up and kicked over his flask. As it spilled onto the leaves, Harry peered at it, but all he saw was clear water. Snape didn't look drunk, anyway. "And I am not—what you said I was."

Harry shook his head. "Fine."

"Fine," Snape echoed, and for a second they stood there, glaring at each other.

Harry was never sure who moved first, but he was willing to say that it was him, because Snape probably wouldn't do something like that. Then he forgot about it. Snape's nose was butting into his cheek, and he was grunting in frustration in a way that turned darker when Harry ran a hand down Snape's spine and to his arse, and he was trying to wrap one leg around Harry's thigh, maybe to trip him, maybe to rub against him.

It was different than anything Harry had ever had at Beltane, and that made it _wonderful_.

They ended up on a pile of mostly soft leaves not far from one of the fires, because you could do things like that at Beltane, but Snape still insisted on a semi-private spot. Harry thought he would have gone for one of the more private spots yet, the ones behind trees or in small nooks and crannies of the hills, but neither of them could wait that long.

Harry lifted his head and kissed Snape savagely, and got a long, thorough kiss in return. Harry tried to nip Snape's tongue, and Snape drew back and gave him a steady look.

"I am going to do this the way _I _want to," Snape said.

"What about what _I _want?" Harry had wrestled Snape's arm partway out of his shirt earlier. He reached up and tried to push the shirt the rest of the way back, but it was caught on Snape's neck and Snape's implacable glare, and Harry wasn't at a good angle, anyway, trapped under Snape's clutching hands.

"You are going to want what I want, by the end of the evening," Snape said. His voice descended like his hands, which found and unfastened the buttons holding Harry's shirt closed deftly. Harry half-hoped he would have some kind of trouble with the zipper on Harry's jeans, but that was put aside, too. Of course; Snape had lived in the Muggle world for a long time.

Then Snape's hands found his cock, and Harry decided he was _glad _Snape hadn't had any kind of trouble. Harry shoved himself impatiently forwards. Snape's fingers curled around him, at a strange angle, and Harry wondered if he was picturing a stirring rod.

Snape bent down and kissed him again before Harry could snicker at his speculation. Harry gasped onto his tongue this time, and Snape pulled his jeans off him by main force, then followed it with his pants, which he whirled and tossed grandly into the nearest clump of trees. Harry opened his mouth to complain about that, and Snape filled it with his tongue, then with his fingers. Harry sucked on them.

All his world was alive, prickling and poking at him, the way that the leaves beneath his back did. His skin was too hot on the side nearest the fire, too cold on the flank nearest the tree's shade, and all burning where it contracted under Snape's touch. His mouth shone under the slick slide of those nails; they tasted blunt, hard. Harry could smell a moldering scent from the leaves underneath them, and salt where Snape shifted and panted above him.

Above all, there was the smell of fire.

"Lift up your arse," Snape muttered.

Harry did, and yelped a little as the feeling of cloth above him turned to all skin. Snape must have cast a spell that got him naked, Harry thought, and immediately felt like a genius for thinking it.

He didn't know that spell, but he did know the one that Snape cast on his arse, with the precision and aim that was the last reassurance Harry needed that Snape really wasn't drunk. Harry promptly opened his legs, holding them up as best he could when he needed to reach down and his fingers kept getting tangled with Snape's, or with Snape's robes.

Of all the things he had done tonight, that was the one to shock Snape. He simply froze, staring down at Harry, his mouth slightly open. Harry smiled. Snape would never be handsome, but Harry liked the gleam of his teeth and his tongue.

"So eager?" Snape whispered, apparently asking someone off to the side, with the way he looked towards the tree.

"Yes," Harry said, and tried to wriggle closer to Snape. It made the leaves underneath him crackle but not move much, but at least it attracted Snape's attention back to where it belonged, on Harry.

"Yes, you are," Snape said, apparently answering his own question, and bent down to kiss Harry. This time, it was so slow that Harry could barely feel Snape's tongue moving against his. Harry lifted his head, kissed urgently back, and kicked Snape's thigh with one foot. Snape winced and moved aside.

"Come _on_," Harry said. He knew that spell. There was more than enough slickness covering his arse for Snape to put his whole cock in. Some of Harry's more cautious lovers tended to use it. "Come _on _now."

Snape, still glancing off to the side a little now and then as if he thought that someone else must be there and casting all this magic, eased slowly into him. Harry tensed around the burn, then made himself not tense. He parted his legs further, because somehow there was more of Snape in the way than he had ever felt before, and clasped them around Snape's hips, or thighs, or whatever they were, as soon as Snape was inside.

But Snape didn't move. He just stayed where he was, as frozen as if there was no fire, staring down at Harry with wide, still eyes.

"You _have _done this before, right?" Harry asked, a minute later.

Snape made a sound that was indescribable, and shoved into him. Harry laughed and welcomed it, and that made Snape nearly pause again, before Harry glared at him and he got the point, and Snape began to really fuck him, and they were off to the races.

Harry kept getting pushed up the bed of leaves, and he didn't care. They were going to go a long way before he hit his head on a tree root or something, and in the meantime he could sometimes feel grass underneath his shoulders, too, and see the colors the fire stitched across Snape's face, and that was delightful.

And he could _feel _Snape inside him. That was delightful, too.

Harry doubled down, concentrating on those thrusts, luxuriating in how long they took, in the way that Snape had started to pant, how the burning from Snape's fucking blended with the burning in Harry's muscles from leaping over fires and dancing wildly around them and racing people he hardly knew in circles tonight, and his heart leaped up, flying out of his chest, circling around them, making him dizzy with inspiration.

It wasn't enough, it would never be enough, but at least by the time Snape stiffened and thrust and grunted and thrashed, Harry was ready to come, too. He reached down and squeezed his own cock, startled to find fingers already there.

Snape was _touching _him, and Harry came with that image in mind, riding the imagined sensation of the gripping hand as much as the real one.

They lay there for a little while afterwards, panting, but then Harry remembered the other thing he had wanted to do with Snape, the thing he hadn't got to do. He pushed at Snape's shoulders until Snape raised his head. The expression on his face was dazed, and Harry paused, tempted to let him rest.

On the other hand, "dazed" would work better for what Harry wanted to do than "alert." He pushed at Snape's shoulders again. "Let's jump over a fire together."

"After _that_?" Snape waved a hand between them, which pointed right at Harry's arse, which Harry took as a compliment. "I would fall into the flames."

"Not with me to support you," Harry said firmly, and reached for his own wand, to cast the necessary Lightening and Floating Charms.

So it came about that Harry and Snape ran straight at a fire a few minutes later, and when Harry jumped Snape came with him, and if his hand was caught up in Harry's and his face was pale and doubting, well, it didn't matter. What _mattered _was that they were aloft, over the flames, and then landing, whirling, laughing, someone flung a garland of flowers over Harry's head and another flask at Snape, and Snape had survived and Harry was standing there without his feet on fire, they were both alive.

_I wish this could last for a while, _Harry thought, eyes lingering on Snape, and the way his face was flushed in the firelight, and how he hadn't retreated back into the shadows yet. _I wish it could._

But that was only madness, the madness of Beltane. Harry would have to wake up in the morning and accept that they weren't going to see each other again for at least a year.

**Beltane Eve, 2005**

Harry straightened up from the couch when he heard the front door open. He wouldn't be able to explain what he was doing bending over and sniffing Severus's seat to Hermione, the most sympathetic of his friends, let alone to Severus.

A year together had taught Harry a lot, but not much about explanations.

He moved towards the kitchen, already counting things off in his mind. Drinks, food, ribbons, all of those were in place. The Beltane fires weren't lit yet, the last chore, but then, they wouldn't be until the garden of Godric's Hollow was full of laughter and merriment. Harry wasn't looking forward to those fires at all, not the way he had last year. Then, a fire had burned in his heart to match them.

Now, the anticipation of what was going to come in two days' time weighed him down and smothered them like ashes.

"Harry! Are you here?"

It _was _Hermione, and Harry turned to put on the brave front he felt necessary, not so much for himself as for Severus. There was the chance that Hermione would try to browbeat Severus into staying with him if she knew how Harry felt, and Harry couldn't bear for that to happen.

_Two more days._

**Day After Beltane, 2004**

Harry woke slowly, and grinned a little. So his eyelids were stuck together with what felt like gummy glue, and he had bits of dirt beneath his fingernails that he suspected would take scrubbing with soap to get out, and his limbs ached from making love on a bed of leaves. So what? It had still been fun, and traditionally, the day after Beltane was one where no one demanded a lot of you in the wizarding world, and people knew about speaking in lowered voices and sympathetically.

When he sat up, he almost fell back into the leaves again. Snape was sitting beside him, and his eyes were glittering. He had been so quiet that Harry hadn't sensed him at all. True, they had come back to this bed of leaves, _their _bed, together after jumping over the fire, but Harry had assumed he would depart after Harry fell asleep. No reason for him to stay.

Snape seemed to find the question in Harry's eyes and answer it, unnervingly—either that, or he had simply pierced past Harry's Occlumency shields, which Harry had to admit had never been the best. "You have no idea what you've done, do you, Potter?" he whispered.

Harry shook his head, with a frown. Then he stopped. The motions that sent through his arse were a bad idea, and Snape's smirk as he caught sight of Harry doing it was a worse one. Harry carefully bowed his head into his arms and whispered, "No. I don't understand. Did you get burned when we jumped over the fire or something?"

"If it were _only_ that," Snape muttered, and paused, one of his significant pauses, but Harry had never understood those and this was no different. Finally, Snape sighed hard enough to blow the heads off some dandelions and said, "Look at your right wrist."

Harry turned his head by degrees, and made his eyes focus the same way. Then he frowned and shrugged. Someone had knotted a green and gold ribbon around his wrist. He might have done it himself. Things got a bit blurry after the fire, he had to admit. He only knew that they had come back to their sheltered nook after the jump because they were obviously sitting in it. "So what? Some prank?"

Snape snarled and held up his left wrist. There was another complicated knot there, although these ribbons were white and green.

Harry blinked blankly at him. Finally, when Snape's crowding presence seemed to demand _some _kind of response, he offered, "Well, at least we know it's probably not some new kind of venereal disease?"

Snape made a noise now that he probably hadn't used since the war. He reached up and plucked at the ribbons on his wrist.

His fingers went straight through them. The ribbons glittered and glowed, made of light, and then settled back into place. Harry had the impression that they might have been a bit tighter than before.

Harry blinked and peered at them, forgetting the aching of his body in his interest. The ribbons sparkled, and yes, they looked like they were garlands of light tied around Snape's wrist instead of ribbons. He reached up and took Snape's arm without asking for permission, turning his hand back and forth. The ribbons never altered no matter how he looked at them.

Harry reached out and slid his fingers up his own wrist, approaching slowly, wondering what would happen. The ribbons seemed normal until he got close to them; the bows were impressive, and Harry did have to wonder why he wouldn't have felt someone looping this around his wrist. But when he touched them, all he felt was a gentle warmth like holding his hand in a beam of sunlight.

"Well?" Snape had his arms folded, and he was scowling at Harry.

Harry shook his head. "I don't know what it is. I suppose we'll have to find Hermione and get her to help us take them off." He reached for his clothes, then paused. They weren't here. Oh, well. He picked up his wand and Summoned them.

"This is not a prank that can be reversed," Snape said between his teeth. "This means that we are _handfasted. _For a year and a day."

Harry stared. He knew that he'd heard Hermione talking about that term, but not what it meant. Just that Luna had got handfasted to someone she liked last year at Beltane, and that the year before that, George and Angelina had been lucky to avoid it, because it would have messed up all their wed—

"We're _married_?" Harry shook his hand, hard. The ribbons only hung there, and glowed. If light could be said to be smug, Harry thought in disgust, then these would be smug.

"That is what I have been saying," Snape said. He was huddling with his arms around his knees now, and Harry didn't have any desire as he looked at him. Well, maybe the urge to comfort him. No one who had survived what Snape had should look that cold and comfortless. "It must have happened when we made love and then jumped the fires. It—it usually happens the other way around, and that is why I thought there was no danger. But, perhaps because of the loosening of traditions in the wizarding community, sharing a bed before the marriage has been officially declared must not seem a bargain-breaker to the magic." Snape's eyes were closed.

Harry thought as rapidly as he could over what Snape had told him, then shook his head and scrambled to his feet. His arse protested. He ignored it. Lots more than his arse was going to be protesting if he didn't get this fixed. "Come on. We have to find Hermione."

Snape looked up at him and sneered, and at least that was more familiar. "She cannot fix everything for you, Potter. In particular, she cannot fix being handfasted to someone you hate. Handfasted is what we are, and complaining will not change matters."

"Neither will sitting around and bitching," Harry snapped back, and was glad to see that some of the steel returned to Snape's spine at that. "You already said that this isn't a normal handfasting. Maybe it's something else, something different. We might as well at least _ask _Hermione. She will know if anyone does."

Snape's sneer was more half-hearted, this time, but he began to gather his clothes. Harry kept one eye on him, just to make sure that he wouldn't run away.

Although, considering the faint, glowing line that appeared between the ribbons of light on Snape's wrist and the ones on his whenever their hands passed each other, maybe that wouldn't be so easy.

* * *

Hermione stepped back and glared at the ribbons of light as though they had personally offended her.

Harry felt a sharp shiver pass around his backbone. When Hermione did _that_, it was a good sign that she had given up on other options, and was hoping to change reality by the sheer force of her scowl. "Hermione?" he whispered, and reached out with his hand.

Hermione caught his wrist and held his hand still, then cast one more spell that Harry couldn't be sure of, since it was nonverbal. But it made the ribbons light up and shimmer like a Muggle disco ball, and then the sparks leaped off his wrist and soared across the air to Snape's wrist, where they made his ribbons sparkle in the same way.

"No," Hermione said. "It didn't manifest in the traditional way, maybe because you leaped the fire only after you bedded each other." Harry was astonished that she could say that without turning red in the face, but apparently addressing this like a problem to be solved took away even the embarrassment of talking about her best friend's sex life. "But this is more or less a traditional handfasting. For a year and a day, I'm sure. Until next year, the day after Beltane."

Snape snarled an oath and turned away to kick the tree they stood under. They'd found Hermione near one of the trees that had decorations strung in them, unwinding them from the branches.

Harry swallowed and turned back to face Hermione. "You don't think that there's any way to be free of this, then?"

"I said it was a traditional handfasting," Hermione said, and led his eyes to Snape. He was standing in front of the tree with his forehead resting against the bark, his hands curled around the trunk and cutting into it. Seeing that, Harry swallowed. It looked like there wasn't going to be any easy way of getting away from this, then.

"It means you have to live together," Hermione added, forestalling Harry's next question because she was perceptive like that. "And you can't have sex with anyone besides each other for the duration of the year."

Harry closed his eyes. He was without any significant partners, luckily, but he didn't know if Snape was. Even some people who were perfectly faithful at other times of the year would sleep around on Beltane, because it was part of the tradition.

"Do you have anyone you're—dating?" he asked Snape, keeping his eyes closed. He didn't think he wanted to use the word "dating" with Snape, but then, until last night, he wouldn't have thought to use the word "attractive" either.

"No," said Snape stiffly. "But my business…I brew potions that open up the full potential of a wand to spells, and increase the potency of a wizard's bonding with his wand." Harry opened his eyes, about to ask more, since all he had known about Snape's business was that it involved potions and was therefore uninteresting, but Snape was continuing. "My flat is above the shop. I am _unsure_ how we are supposed to share it."

He turned around and glared at Harry. Harry winced. Snape's eyes kept flicking away from him, around the trees and the clearing, as though he could spot some escape route if he looked long enough. That made it harder to face than if Snape had just gone about hating him in peace.

"You'll find some way to make this work," Hermione said. "Since you can reach your flat easily enough by Floo or Apparating, Professor, I think that you ought to share Harry's house at Godric's Hollow. It's big enough for two."

"I would rather die," said Snape.

Hermione opened her mouth to protest, but Harry reached out and touched her arm. He knew she only wanted to help, and he appreciated that, but he had seen a spasm almost wrench the lines of Snape's face apart. He thought he knew why Snape felt that way, and it was something they could talk about together.

"Mind if we take a walk, Hermione?" he asked, and smiled a little when she snapped her head back to him. "I promise that we won't hex each other."

"The handfasting wouldn't like that," Hermione said, which Harry had already reckoned on. She hesitated, then nodded. "All right."

"Thanks," Harry said, and turned to Snape. He would let Snape choose the direction of the walk. He thought _he _would probably want to get away from Hermione's listening ears at least as much as Harry did.

Snape gave him a long glare that said he didn't appreciate the privilege of choosing the direction of their walk, and then stormed off. Harry followed him, pausing to shrug a rueful acceptance at Hermione. Well, he had known that this wouldn't be easy.

Snape stormed a long distance across the clearing. Harry followed him, feeling more and more strange. Last night, this clearing had been filled with a glow of radiance so warm that Harry had felt as though anything was possible, even forging a pleasant time with Snape. Next year, he would do his best to remember that Beltane could be deceptive.

Snape kept walking until he finally seemed to realize that he wasn't going to leave Harry behind, and spun around to confront him. "Will you leave me to mourn the failure of my life in peace?" he snarled.

Harry shook his head. "No, because I wanted to talk to you about this. You say that you would rather die." He paused until Snape was peering at him in irritation, because at least it meant Harry had snapped him out of his brooding, and finished, "That's not what I expected to hear from a man who survived the war."

Snape moved back, his nostrils flaring. "You know that how I survived the war is my secret, Potter," he said, even more stiffly than he had said anything so far. "I do not intend to tell anyone how I survived Nagini's fangs."

Harry rolled his eyes. "I don't want your bloody secrets. They probably only concern Potions knowledge that I couldn't process, anyway." He paused as Snape nodded, and his own lips twitched despite himself. Well. He had known that giving Snape a chance to get some blows in would probably come out of this little walk. "What I meant is that you did survive, since you're here in front of me. And I didn't think a man who did that would give his life up so easily."

Other than opening his mouth a little, Snape didn't reply. Harry paused, then played another card. "And I'd thought I was wrong to call you a coward. Well. Someone who would rather die than live with a mistaken handfasting for a year is a coward." He nodded decisively and turned away. "I'm going to ask Hermione what happens to the other partner in a handfasting when their partner _selfishly _decides to die."

"Potter, wait!"

Biting his lip, Harry turned around and widened his eyes innocently. "What, Snape? Don't you have a suicide to plan?"

Snape marched up to him, his robes billowing around him. Harry managed to resist tilting his head back to look up at Snape, but it was an effort. They weren't so very different in height anymore, but Snape could be as intimidating as fuck with that long nose and overbearing…bearing.

"It was a figure of speech," Snape hissed into his ear.

"I've not always had good luck assuming, with you," Harry told him sweetly.

Snape pulled back and looked at him as if Harry had decided to make his life difficult simply by existing. Since Harry had the impression that Snape _always_ thought he had done that, this wasn't anything new.

Last _night _had been something new, and it didn't even have to result in strange ribbons appearing around their wrists for that to be true. Harry just waited, and waited. Either Snape would realize the same thing, or he would combust from the force of the glare he was giving Harry. Harry was fairly sure that he was less flammable.

Finally, Snape uttered a muffled oath, and turned around. "I suppose that one may _begin _in the understanding that one does not always begin as one means to go on," he muttered. "I will fetch a few of the things that I need for an overnight stay, and come to your house."

Harry clasped his hands in front of him and bowed. Snape eyed him sideways. Harry, straightening up to grin at him, didn't care. This was enough for right now.

**Beltane Eve, 2005**

"What's the matter, Harry? You seem upset."

Trust Hermione to notice, of course. Harry looked around the back garden and stared at the shining clumps of ribbons hanging on the trees. They strongly resembled the ones that he and Severus had woken up with nearly a year ago.

The ribbons had sunk into their skins over time. If Harry wasn't looking for them, they were just little gleams of color near his wrist that he didn't notice. But he could summon them back up when he wanted, and make them warm, barely tangible bits of light.

He thought about doing it now. But Severus might come around the corner any moment, and he would see and he would—no, he would understand. But he would understand many things that Harry didn't necessarily want him to understand, and that was all there was to it.

"Harry?"

Hermione's hand was gentle on his arm. Harry turned towards her and opened his eyes, meaning to make some meaningless comment on the unusual warmth of the night, or the proportion of birch wood in the fires, or anything else that would be safe and calm and without significance.

But the warmth of the night was overcome by the warmth waiting for him in Hermione's eyes, and Harry cursed softly and leaned against her. "Why do I want it to continue?" he whispered. "Merlin knows that I've been unhappy enough this year."

Hermione hugged him, her chin brushing his shoulder. "But you have a certain amount of unhappiness that you go through all the years of your life," she whispered. "I think that you've had a certain amount of happiness this year, as well."

Harry closed his eyes, and lost himself to memories of one such certain amount.

**Midsummer, 2004**

"Potter, _where _are you going? You promised me that you would help me move the rest of my cauldrons over tonight. I will entrust you only with the things that cannot break, after the disgraceful job you did on the books."

Harry bit his lip and turned slowly back to face Snape. "We discussed this," he said, and made his voice as nice as he could. Yes, they'd discussed it, but Snape showed a tendency to forget, conveniently, whenever he wished. "I have a Midsummer celebration at the Burrow to attend. I do it every year."

Snape lifted his head so high that Harry could have counted all the contents of his nostrils, if he had wanted. He didn't want, and so faced the front door again. There was no reason that Snape had to finish moving from his flat to Harry's house tonight. He had merely decided he had to because God forbid that Harry have _fun_.

Having Snape live in his house was precisely the opposite of fun, Harry had discovered. It wasn't like he and Snape had exchanged that many harsh words, but…

It was little things.

Harry would come down and find the dirty teacups he had left in the sink cleaned up and replaced in the cupboard, in such a precise manner that they all stood the same distance from the edge of the shelf. There was something so passive-aggressive about it that it never failed to make his teeth grind.

He had tried cleaning up the teacups himself instead of leaving them in the sink, but to no avail. Snape would come down and rearrange them, so that they all stood the same distance from the edge of the shelf again, and they were all turned so that the green and blue stripes that ran along several of them appeared to form one continuous, unbroken pattern. Harry had tried chipping one of the cups and throwing the chip away, and somehow Snape had Summoned it from the rubbish and cast _Reparo _in a way that made it impossible to tell the rim had ever been broken at all.

Snape left no clothes on the floor. Snape never wore anything other than unrelieved black. Snape could concentrate on a book in a way that left room for nothing but the words on the printed page, and he had a trick of closing his eyes and turning his head away that made every suggestion for dinner or a trip out that Harry offered to him seem like the height of stupidity. Snape never had dirty socks that got lost in the wash, probably because no sock would dare. Snape would never have a chair that was out of place, or a hair, or anything other than the few bogies Harry had once caught him wiping from his nose, with a handkerchief that then vanished somewhere else.

After how dirty his hair had been during school, he was _offensively _neat.

And Snape always kept the door of his lab locked, with a casualness that at first amused Harry and then infuriated him. So Snape thought a few simple Locking Charms could keep _Harry_ out? A trained Auror, even if it had been a while since Harry had quit that training and he was absent-mindedly looking about for something to do? Ha!

Then Harry had cast the first _Finite _to dispel those simple Locking Charms on the door, and been hit with the backlash from a completely unfamiliar spell that left him limping for days.

Snape also denied people who had tried to break into his lab—_his _lab, as if it wasn't part of _Harry's _house—pain-relieving potions.

All of that flashed through Harry's head, and he shook it. "I don't want to help you tonight," he said. "I promised tonight to the Weasleys, like always, and you're not going to get in the way of that." He turned resolutely towards the door again.

"How long will it last, this celebration of yours?"

"Don't worry, Sleeping Beauty, I'll use Silencing Spells when I come in."

There came the sound of a sigh that was old when the world was young, and Snape, picking his way through the words as through a minefield, said, "I had thought that I would come with you, in exchange for your help with the rest of the move when you return."

Harry frankly turned around and gaped at him. Snape gave a fretful tug at his wrist. Apparently his ribbons did Something when Harry was upset. Harry had never got him to admit what the Something was, and it wasn't enough to stop him from annoying Harry at every chance he got, so Harry had largely discounted its existence.

"You _mean _that?" Harry asked.

"Yes." Snape tilted his head to the side as if Harry were a potion that had developed an unexpected complication. "I cannot complete the move by myself, and this would be a fair exchange." The way he said the word _fair _made it clear whose side he expected to have the greater obligation.

"Fine," Harry said, when he could make his tongue work again. "Then come on. We're late." And he escaped out the door, shaking his head. Snape must really want help with those heavy cauldrons, for him to have agreed to this.

* * *

Harry knew that Snape made kind of a blot on the brightness of the ceremony, from the looks that the Weasleys were giving them, but he was enjoying himself too much to excuse them or apologize.

The Midsummer celebration was a bigger one than the Beltane ceremony. No sane wizards would bring little kids to a Beltane celebration, unless it was going to be one of the tame, stripped-down ones on Beltane Eve where the ribbons were for the kids to collect and the fires were built low to encourage small feet to pass safely over them.

But at Midsummer, the bonfires blazed too tall to jump over, but just right to run in circles around and shriek, and all the Weasley children were there. Harry sipped a kind of "whisky" that Molly made by mixing together butterbeer and a bunch of different kinds of juice, which surprisingly tasted good together, and felt content.

This was what life was supposed to be about. People, on a summer evening, sitting outside, under the awnings set up in case it rained, and talking. Ron and Hermione were talking about the Ministry with Arthur, Charlie was describing a story of handling a particularly raucous dragon to an audience of Bill and Fleur's wide-eyed children, and Molly stood chatting with Ginny and George, apparently describing a prank that had traveled around her kitchen and how she had doused it. Harry hid his smile in his drink.

"I notice that you are not talking with anyone."

Harry glanced sideways at Snape in surprise. Snape hadn't accepted a drink, hadn't accepted food, hadn't done anything that would make him part of celebrating Midsummer. Of course, Harry thought. Celebrating the day of longest light wasn't for him. "No," he replied, instead of saying that Snape standing there with arms folded and a scowl on his face was enough to put anyone off. "I will, soon. There's something I want to ask Arthur, and George and I should discuss some of the investments he's making. I don't think they're sound."

Snape stared at him, so motionless that Harry checked his robes automatically. Snape sometimes stared at him like that before he went to work in the mornings, so that Harry was still trying to find the stain or speck of food long after Snape had left for his shop.

"There is nothing," Snape said at last. "Nothing for me here." He turned away with a flare of his robes that nearly brushed Harry's nose, he spun so hard and moved as though so offended. "Finish what you are doing and come away as soon as possible. I grow weary of this spectacle."

Harry ground his teeth and turned his back on Snape. So Snape had to be a spoilsport and weird and irritating, but that didn't mean Harry had to let it ruin or rule his good mood.

And he didn't. Even though he could feel Snape's stare on the back of his neck as he moved among the fires, and took his turn telling stories to the kids, and teased Charlie about the new burn scar on his face—which Charlie took in good part—and had the conversations he'd wanted to with Arthur and George.

No. He might have to be handfasted to Snape, and they'd made some decisions that they both regretted, but Harry was still going to have fun with his friends and adopted family. Snape couldn't make him give that up.

* * *

"I am amazed that you can still carry the cauldrons, after that."

Harry was a bit too breathless to reply, but he didn't think he needed to. Snape hated fun, he knew that. It didn't surprise him that Snape hated Midsummer, too. Maybe he had a reason, after what had happened at Beltane.

Then again, no one had tried to force him to have sex he obviously didn't want—he _couldn't _want it, or he would have at least looked at Harry in the past six weeks, instead of avoiding and ignoring him as if he didn't exist—and jump over fires this time. So maybe he didn't have a reason to hate Midsummer, at least not as good a reason as he did to hate Beltane.

Harry flopped the cauldrons in the middle of the lab and looked up. Snape was standing behind him, frowning at him. Harry kept his shrug and rolling eyes purely internal, and said, "All done, then?"

"How can you _carry _them after that?"

"Your allergy to having fun isn't common," Harry snapped, and stepped around Snape, heading towards the door of the lab. But Snape's hand closed on his arm, and Harry stopped. It was the first time Snape had touched him since Beltane, other than one time when he'd been coming down the stairs and Harry had grabbed his arm to help him when he stumbled. And then Snape had pulled away as though Harry's skin was slimy like a Shrivelfig.

It probably made Harry pathetic, although he thought that it wasn't _that _pathetic as long as he didn't say it aloud, but he wanted Snape to touch him willingly too much to move away now.

"How can you stand, or walk, or carry things, after drinking what Molly Weasley made you drink?" Snape muttered, so close to Harry's ear that Harry's body woke up and remembered leaves and fire and a sore arse.

Harry then realized what Snape had said, though, and snorted. "That was mostly juice and butterbeer. There was nothing in there that the kids couldn't drink." Bill had warned Victoire away from drinking too much, which was maybe where Snape had got the idea from, but then, Victoire was six years old. It wasn't as though what could knock her out would harm someone like Harry.

"Why…"

Snape let him go. Harry just shook his head and walked to the door. "I don't know why you thought I was drunk," he fired over his shoulder. "It's not like I walked up and propositioned you, did I?"

And then he went out the door, and upstairs to bed. He might have a long day of nothing ahead, as Snape would put it, since he had quit the Aurors, but at least it wasn't a day of resenting the existence of holidays and conversations he wasn't a part of.

**Beltane Eve, 2005**

Severus arrived only when the bonfires had been lit for half an hour and the giggles were getting loud around the Maypole that Ginny had persuaded Harry to set up near the largest fire. Harry had been watching them twine green ribbons and pink flowers around it, and smiling, but now he stiffened and tilted his head back.

"You can feel him?" Ron had had enough Firewhisky that what he meant to be a whisper didn't quite come out that way.

Harry sighed, nodded, and turned to face Severus. In truth, it wasn't like smelling Severus, or even feeling a tug on the handfasting bond between them. He just knew when Severus was there, the way he knew if there was a wind, not from seeing it but from feeling its effects on the things around it.

Severus stood with his arms crossed between two fires. He was frowning at Harry. Harry swallowed. That frown had become familiar in the last month. He knew there was no way that Severus would agree to renew the handfasting—he hadn't got enough out of it—but lately he seemed to be trying to figure out whether Harry would ask him to.

_And what crushing response he'll give in return._

It said a lot, Harry thought sourly, that he was still afraid of that crushing response, in a way, but it was a completely different way than it would have been a year ago. Six years ago. Ten years ago. A year shouldn't have changed so much. It was abundantly clear that it hadn't changed Severus.

"Yes?" he asked, once he got close. Since the equinox, he had mastered a neutral tone. It probably wouldn't fool Severus for long, not when he could still pick up Harry's surface thoughts simply from looking into his eyes, but at least it kept Harry from embarrassing himself.

Severus considered him so long and so deeply that Harry relaxed a little. Severus didn't do that with things that didn't matter. At least their parting would be friendly, as should befit people who had shared a home for a year.

_And more than that._

Severus's mouth turned down at the corners, probably because he had picked up on the thought from Harry's mental surface. "Excuse me," he said, in a voice distant enough to freeze, and turned away, gliding towards the far side of the garden.

Harry sighed. So, no, Severus wouldn't publically embarrass him by rejection. Harry shouldn't have feared he would, really. He knew better than that.

But he still knew how deep his own heart had gone, and while Severus had the depth of heart to match it—Harry knew he did—that he would choose to do so was impossible.

Harry turned back to the fires, and Ron's sympathetic pat on his shoulder. He still enjoyed his friends and family. He still loved them.

It was just his misfortune to have mistaken the false handfasting for the real thing.

**Lammas, 2004**

"Potter. I need you to test a potion for me."

Harry blinked and pushed his glasses up his nose as he considered Snape—Severus, but Harry only called him that in his mind, because he thought Severus would snap if the name ever came out of Harry's mouth. And Harry was more vulnerable to Severus snapping at him than he had ever been before.

Which made no _sense, _not when Harry had had years to grow up, and train in the Aurors, and decide that the Aurors were not what he wanted, and get interested in Beltane celebrations and the other traditional holidays Molly had wanted to celebrate since Fred's death, and gather up the courage to approach Severus at that Beltane celebration in the first bloody place. But that was what his emotions were like, Harry supposed. There were a lot of reasons that his relationship with Ginny hadn't lasted, but his emotions, and how all over the map they were, was a big part of it.

"Yes?" he asked, laying down his book, the latest in a series of adventures obviously and closely based on Harry's life. Harry didn't care for the writing all that much, but it was amusing to see what the author got wrong, and where he'd clearly decided Harry's real life was too boring and struck out in a different direction. Currently, Hadian Powerwrought was facing a dragon with wounds of his own that Harry knew would have been life-threatening, if there was anyone breathing in the book.

"It's a potion that will work only on those who have had their wands broken and repaired." Severus was watching him intently from the middle of the stairs. "And you are the only one I know who has."

"If you can't get any other test subjects, what's the point of inventing a potion like that at all?" Harry asked, rising reluctantly to his feet.

Severus stared at him, and Harry decided he'd have to rephrase the question. "Why did you invent the potion?" he asked.

Severus gave him the only blank look Harry had ever received from him. "What do you mean, _why_?"

Harry couldn't help it. The smile sneaked out onto his face before he could stop it, and Severus's blank look shattered and fell away. "Will you help me test the potion or not?" he asked, swirling around in place on the steps. He'd probably regretted coming down and wanted to go back to his temporary lab now.

"I'll help you test it, as long as it doesn't involve breaking my wand again," Harry muttered, walking over to the stairs.

"I have no wish to be accused of a crime again," Severus murmured, walking in front of him without looking back. "The experiences I have _enjoyed _so far have cured me of any romantic notions."

Harry said nothing, because he wasn't sure that what he wanted to say wouldn't come out in a tone of pity. And Severus would probably try to hit him if that happened. They climbed the steps in silence.

* * *

"Consume the potion, and then hold your wand over the cauldron."

Harry eyed the cauldron in some misgiving. He had grown used to the awful smell and even the awful taste of a lot of potions, but this potion's scent made his head spin with disgust and his stomach heave. And the color was—well, at first Harry had thought it was a kind of dull yellow, but the shade seemed more and more familiar the longer he stared at it, and now he knew. This potion was the color of _earwax._

"Do I have to?" he muttered, even as he took a step closer to the cauldron. "I know that most of the time, your clients just put the potions on their wands to have a stronger bond with them or whatever. Do I _have _to?"

"You are just as much of a whiny child as you ever were, Potter."

Harry felt as though someone had lit his spine on fire. He reached out for the ladle that Severus had handed him, and jammed it into the potion. No wonder Severus wouldn't smile at him, and didn't seem to feel a bit of the attraction that Harry had felt growing under his breastbone for the past few months. He thought of Harry as a _child_, and he wouldn't want to regard or sleep with a child.

"Fine," Harry said, loudly enough that he thought the room must echo with it, and swallowed the potion with a jerk of his head, not even caring that it was thick enough to make him choke on it for a second.

The throbbing sensation that immediately opened up in the middle of his chest made him wish he'd been a little less daring. And then a lot less. Because the throbbing was spreading, and he couldn't even feel his own heart beating frantically, the way he had been able to a minute ago. Instead, he felt the throbbing of the potion, which _might _be his heart, if the potion was hurting it badly enough, but he really didn't know.

He started to sink to the floor, his hands clasped over his chest. Severus was shouting something, probably to make Harry wave his wand over the cauldron like he was supposed to, but Harry couldn't care. The smell was now in his nostrils, and the center of his chest had tightened and was jerking, and sooner or later, either his abused heart or his sternum would fly out his mouth. He didn't know which one. He tried to focus his eyes, to decide which part of the lab Severus would least mind him getting dirty.

Then Severus seized his face, and cast a comprehensive spell that Harry had never heard before, with a hiss at the end of the words. Potion expelled itself from Harry, any way it could come, mostly out the pores of his skin, but some out his mouth, and some out his ears, and some out from beneath his eyelids. Harry shuddered and curled up in a ball. He was glad that he was no longer dying or feeling poisoned or whatever had actually been going on, but ugh, this was almost _more _nasty.

"Are you all right, Potter?"

Harry clung to the sound of the words, and the hand on his shoulder, and the evidence that Severus could be concerned about him sometimes. More concerned than over his lab, even. He had cast that spell without caring that it would cover the floor with slop. He cast another now to clean Harry of the potion, rather than the floor.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Harry said, when he could speak. The potion had burned his throat in unpleasant ways. Harry ran his tongue around, and shuddered. It tasted like bile. But that wasn't anything he couldn't wash out. "Would you get me a glass of water?"

It was there so quickly that Harry suspected that Severus must have had it ready. He nodded his thanks and sipped, slowly. Then he winced and touched his head. Maybe Severus's spell had made everything Harry had eaten drain from him, along with the potion. He usually had a headache this bad—now that the scar was quiet—only when he was hungry.

"Are you well?" Severus was still kneeling beside him, and frowning fiercely, and not seeming to care about the brown-yellow stains on his robes. Harry's heart gave a little song and shudder at the sight, but he didn't smile. He was still too tired. "You look as though you might have hit your head."

Harry did close his eyes and sigh as Severus's fingers slid into his hair, aiming for the back of his skull, and stroking his scalp in the most pleasant way. He bit back the moan that would have come out when those stroking fingers slipped down his neck, though.

"No," he said. "Just hungry. That flushed my stomach along with everything else, right? So I need to eat something."

"Of course." Severus sounded well-satisfied, maybe because it was a problem with a concrete solution instead of the impossible kind that he was always accusing Harry of causing. "Then you can be restored by coming to the kitchen and eating something." He put his hands on Harry's shoulders and drew him to his feet.

That left their faces a short distance from each other. Harry flushed. Luckily, he didn't know if it would show up as much as it would most of the time, when his pallor must still be there. Severus didn't seem inclined to back away if he did notice it. In fact, his hands tightened on Harry's shoulders, and he nodded again. "Food _and _water," he said. "That spell is violent. It was the best one to use—"

Harry snorted lightly. Trust Severus to defend his choice as the best one even when it had some unpleasant consequences.

"—But it may have brought you close to dehydration." Severus put an arm around Harry's shoulders and turned him towards the door. "Come with me."

"Mate?"

Harry felt Severus freeze, as if his body had been turned to stone, the arm around Harry becoming heavy and stiff before it was removed altogether. Harry clutched the nearest lab table to keep from falling, and blinked stupidly at Ron.

Ron looked back and forth between Harry and Severus, and his eyebrows rose. But he only turned back to Harry, with the sense not to ask, which Harry blessed him for, and said, "Your birthday party, mate? I came to get you. And after you promised to be on time so that we could pretend Mum was surprising you with the cake."

"It is—your birthday?"

Severus's voice sounded strangled, more than it had been when he was yelling at Harry about the aftereffects of the potion. Harry shot him a sharp glance. Of course Severus had known the date. Harry didn't expect Severus to acknowledge his birthday, he wasn't _that _far gone, but he had to know, the way that most people in the wizarding world did. Harry's wards had done double duty lately, turning unwieldy and dangerous "gifts" from admirers and enemies alike away.

But Severus was staring at him, and if his face wasn't as blank as when Harry had asked him why he'd invented the potion, it was close. Harry couldn't read it other than as shock. He nodded and turned to Ron. "There was a little accident with a potion," he said. "The way there always is when I'm in a lab."

He didn't glance back to check Severus's reaction to his little lie, and Ron bought it—had no reason not to buy it, really. He just nodded and reached out to help support Harry again. "Well, then come have cake and biscuits and the rest," he said cheerily. "Dad even found some of that Muggle fizzy drink you like!"

Harry would have liked to stay and ask Severus a lot of questions. He would have liked to ask if Severus had lost track of Harry's birthday, or was upset about causing this kind of disaster on his birthday, or something else.

And what the something else might be.

But Ron was there, and Harry had his share of pride. What Severus had given him already—the touch on his shoulder, the apparently genuine concern—was enough of a gift, anyway. So he walked out with his head up, and if he needed Ron's help down the stairs, and a Cleaning Charm to get some of the dried potion on his robes off, Ron didn't ask questions. _He _could imagine all sorts of disasters happening in Potions labs, after all.

And Harry could, too. But it was something else he wished to imagine now, and probably would have to, because the chances of it ever coming into reality again were small.

**Beltane Eve, 2005**

"Harry. I want to speak with you."

Harry still felt the same painful clenching in the center of his chest whenever Severus spoke to him. A lot like that clenching the potion had caused, now that he thought about it. He smiled wryly to himself. He would never have thought that Severus half-poisoning him might be something he looked back on with fondness.

Or the teacups or the snappishness or the freezing silence when Severus wanted to ignore him, for that matter. But all those things had meant he was in the house, and the house had changed into a home, which it hadn't really been before that, during the past year.

"Harry?"

He was drifting into reverie, and while Severus confined way too much of his intellectual performance to Potions, Harry knew he was by no means stupid. He looked up and nodded. "Of course," he said, with calmness that he thought would do credit to someone who wasn't pining with no hope of a return at all. "What about?"

Severus hesitated, glanced at the nearest fire as someone raced towards it to jump, and turned away with a barely perceptible grimace. "Not here."

Harry nodded and followed Severus towards the far part of the meadow. He had come to own far more land in Godric's Hollow than he had ever thought possible. He had bought some from wizards who wanted to move out rather than continue living so near Muggles, and some had belonged to his parents, and some was a gift. Land, and privacy, were about the only gifts Harry would allow himself to accept from wizards who wanted to do something for him.

Severus halted under a tree that had somehow escaped decoration, except for one white ribbon twined around the longest branch. Harry thought Hermione had probably been distracted as she was weaving it, and had left it like that.

At least it served a purpose now, giving him something to look at as Severus softly cleared his throat.

Now that he had Harry alone, he appeared as reluctant to speak as Harry could have been. He cleared his throat that once, and looked at the ground. Harry winced. He suspected he knew what Severus was going to say, but he couldn't stand that look of pain. He would rather have Severus speak the words and end the handfasting than leave him in pain like that.

"It's all right," he whispered. "You can say it to me."

Severus lifted his head and turned to Harry. His face was a study in painful uncertainty now, not just pain, and Harry caught his breath. It was too much like autumn, the beginning of autumn, more than six months ago, and what had happened that day.

**Mabon, 2004**

"I take it that you do not plan as large a celebration with your friends on the equinox as you do on the solstice?"

Harry glanced up, vaguely impressed that Severus had remembered the date. He hadn't made any mention of it before now, and Harry had thought that he would simply go off to a celebration at the Weasleys', since Severus had nothing he wanted Harry to help him do tonight and no reason to attend.

"No," he said, putting aside the book he was looking at. Hermione had taken to giving him various books in desperation, thinking Harry might find the solution to his career woes in one of them. For some reason, this was about law, and it was actually _interesting_. "Mrs. Weasley finds autumn depressing, I think. She mostly has a party tonight to celebrate in defiance of everything, not _about _anything."

Severus nodded, once. His face was so crimped and folded in on itself that Harry had no idea what he was feeling. But he stood where he was, in front of the library doorway, his gaze passing over Harry's head to fasten on the books.

Harry waited. This was the way Severus _was, _sometimes, and usually he would say the important things if Harry let him get around to it. The only bad thing was waiting for him to make up his mind.

Severus finally turned to him and said, "I don't think the beginning of autumn is something to celebrate, either."

"Okay," said Harry. For once, the revelation of what Severus felt had cleared nothing up. "That's all right," he finally added, when Severus didn't move away and Harry reckoned that his words hadn't been enough. "Well, I mean. You can come to the party with me if you want."

That got him the deep sneer he almost never saw anymore. "I would rather spend the night brewing Blood-Replenishing Potions," Severus snapped, and stalked away.

Harry rubbed his forehead. He knew that Blood-Replenishing Potions were a tricky potion, with the combination of ingredients needing to be just right, but also simple ones for a Potions master, which meant Severus despised preparing them. _Why _did he know that about Severus?

And did Severus expect him to know it, or had he only said that because he wanted to, not caring about confusing Harry?

Harry stood up and shrugged. He honestly didn't know, and he would have to leave quickly if he wanted to get to Molly's party on time.

* * *

"And then _I _told him, not in an office with house-elves!" Hermione leaned back in her chair and beamed as everyone burst into laughter and applause over the story of her latest legal triumph.

Harry smiled automatically, and then turned and wandered away. He was restless tonight, in a way that couldn't be accounted for by the mere fact of Severus not coming with him. Harry had ceased to expect his presence at anything important in his life.

Living with Severus mattered to him. Harry had become neater, quieter, and gained a little knowledge about Potions just from listening to Severus mutter to himself. And he had gained an insight into the life of someone so private that he felt obscurely honored by the knowledge.

But it seemed that nothing had changed for Severus in living with Harry, except some minor inconveniences. Harry sighed and paused to stare at one of the figures of braided straw hanging from a nearby branch. It had sunflower seeds for eyes. Harry didn't know exactly what the mystical significance of them was. He was saving the question for when he wanted to distract Hermione from an impending lecture.

He reached out and flicked his finger against the straw. It gave a sad, dry little rustle. Harry nodded. He felt much the same—restless, dried out. The long holiday from doing anything, which he had looked forward to so much when he quit the Aurors, had turned out to be a space full of boredom after all.

Then Harry paused. Well, the autumnal equinox was one of those days when the seasons changed, right? A day that was good for new beginnings.

He glanced over at Molly, standing in the center of her family and using a charm to make the softly changing leaves of a tree green again, and snickered to himself again. _She doesn't think so._

But nothing anybody thought had to control what Harry did, now. Voldemort was dead. Dumbledore was dead. Harry's friends had been too much with him for them to get upset just because he was changing his mind about something silly and insignificant.

Harry swallowed, his face tingling. And Severus…

Severus didn't care, and never would. Harry had forced him into this handfasting, even if he didn't know what he was doing. So it was silly to expect to make any decision that he would need to refer to Severus, unless it was something that changed the house.

Harry raised a hand and laid it against the straw figure, over where its beating heart would have been if the little man had one. It was silly, but it meant something to _him_, and that was all that had to matter.

"I'm going to start studying law," Harry whispered. "That's the most interesting thing in the books Hermione gave me, and that's what I'm going to do." He paused, wondering whether he needed to commit himself to anything else, and then remembered what he had thought a few days ago when he was reading a book about the use of Veritaserum in trials. "And make sure that all suspects get fair trials. So there's never another Sirius."

The straw figure beneath his hand burst into eerie, vivid blue flames. Harry snatched his arm back, gasping, before he realized that the flames hadn't burned him. They were nothing but soft, glittering, dry things. He passed his fingers hesitantly through them, and felt the same crisp coolness on his hand as he did from the air.

"Uncle Harry did something!"

That was Victoire, staring up at him with wide eyes. Harry smiled and bent down to ruffle her hair, even as Bill came over to see what his daughter was looking at, followed by Fleur. Bill's eyebrows rose when he saw the blue flames, which had coiled in on and destroyed the straw figure, burning it to ash and less than ash.

"You made a vow, Harry?" he asked curiously. "They used to be called vow-keepers, these little figures." He tapped another one nearby, and made it sway on its string. "If someone really meant their promise, they would burn up."

"Is that what I was doing?" Harry shook his head. He was glad that he hadn't known that, or he would have been really nervous, and that might have destroyed his pleasure in the commitment and weakened his vow. "Well. I didn't know. I did just choose a career, though."

Fleur smiled at him. "I know you would make the right choice," she said, her accent weaker and only darting through her words like sunlight now and then. "You always do."

Harry had to roll his eyes at her. "You think I made the right choice with Severus?" He could call him by his first name around his family, although Ron had nearly choked on his drink the first time Harry did so.

"You always make the right choice," Fleur said again, and led Victoire back towards the center of the party. Harry blinked at Bill, who only shrugged a little and grinned, shaking his head.

"I don't ask her about mystical Veela things," Bill said, and then put an arm around Harry's shoulder and guided him back likewise. "But seriously, congratulations. I think that it's about time."

Harry breathed out. Yeah, maybe it was. And maybe his choice didn't have to have anything to do with Severus. It could just be something that was.

* * *

"What did you _do_?"

Harry paused with one foot on the front stoop, staring in at Severus. He hadn't come fully into the house yet, and Severus was spitting at him, his wand drawn. Harry backed off with his hands raised. Did Severus think he was under the influence of the Imperius, or that he was under Polyjuice Potion, or what?

"Severus," said Harry, as soothingly as he could. "It's me. What happened?" That was the second thing his mind went to, that there was an accident in the Potions lab or the kitchen and Severus had decided to blame him. Because of course the great Potions master could never fail to make ingredients do exactly what he wanted, Harry thought. His earlier good mood was souring.

Severus crossed the distance between them and jabbed his wand at Harry. Harry ducked back to avoid him, scowling. Severus held up his wrist and jabbed _it_ towards Harry.

There were the glittering light-ribbons of the handfasting again, although this time they had a new one among them, a filmy blue ribbon. Harry stared at it in surprise, then at his own wrist. Nothing had shown up, however.

"You made a promise of some sort," Severus whispered. "A binding promise. Something that affects the handfasting." His eyes were glittering, his voice low, but not the less potent for that. "How _dare _you. As if my life has not been manipulated enough."

Harry stared at him long enough that Severus seemed to think he had to jab his wand towards Harry again, or things would get less than serious.

Then Harry pushed past Severus and stormed into the middle of the house. Severus followed him, hissing questions that Harry chose not to answer. He walked up to the library and sat down with the law book again, then looked up over the book at Severus.

"It's nothing that affects you." Harry was amazed at how calm his voice was. He had wanted to come here because he felt safer here, more committed and collected, settled among the books that had helped him to decide, but he didn't feel the nervousness that he had thought he would. "I made a promise that I would try out a new career, and I made it on one of those straw figures that Molly hangs up at Mabon. I didn't even know they were vow-keepers. Not until it burst into flames and Bill told me. So it only affects the handfasting because it's another vow I made at a seasonal celebration. That's all. You don't need to worry about it." He turned his head down and began to read the book again.

Harry really did think Severus had walked away, and started when his wand and hand slammed down on the arm of the chair. He glanced up, then glared. Severus was staring at him with a twisted mouth that, for the life of him, Harry couldn't understand the meaning of.

"Do you mind?" Harry asked as mildly as he could, hitching up one shoulder and turning away from Severus so he could flip over a page. "I can't read when you're standing here like this."

"What did you vow to do?" Severus whispered.

The big problem with Severus's whispers was that when he did them this close, Harry could imagine that they were intimate, the way they hadn't been since Beltane. He raised a hand and shoved Severus in the middle of the chest. He staggered back, his eyes on Harry, his lips slightly parted.

"I just told you," Harry said. "I'm going to study law. There's still too many people going without trials, and I want to make sure that someone innocent, like Sirius, is never sent to Azkaban again. That's all."

Severus shook his head. "The blue ribbon would not have appeared on my wrist if your vow did not affect me at all."

Harry rolled his eyes. "That's only because this handfasting is unusual and—" No, not even when he was trying to speak harshly to Severus could he bring himself to call it stupid. He changed the subject as smoothly as he knew how. "Boringly going along with the rules. If someone in a _normal _handfasting made a vow like that, they'd expect their partner to know about it and rejoice along with them. But I know that you can't. The ribbon only appeared because that's the way the handfasting is supposed to work, not because it actually affects you." He looked down and turned a page in his book again.

Silence again. But Severus still did not go away. It got so that Harry's skin prickled with the force of his gaze, and he didn't like it. He looked back up. "_Well_?"

Then he wished he hadn't said that, because in the moment between looking up and saying it, he saw the soft, pained expression on Severus's face, softer than anything he had seen there before. It seemed like he might have been about to mention the handfasting, and not mockingly.

But when Harry spoke, he drew himself up so tall that Harry thought he must be standing on his toes, and inclined his head, and stalked out of the library.

Harry turned back to his book. His shoulders quivered with tension for a long time, but he made them calm down by an effort of will.

Severus had been pushing and pushing and pushing at him to do something with his life. Well, Harry had. And they hadn't discussed it or anything stupid like that because Severus had made it plain that he didn't want to do anything so civilized as _discussion _with Harry.

_We can fuck, but God forbid we talk, _Harry thought savagely, and near ripped the page as he turned it.

**Beltane Eve, 2005**

But the silence went on and on, and still Severus didn't say what he had come to say, and Harry heard the noise of other guests arriving behind them. He shifted. He was the host, and while Hermione had agreed to act as the hostess and help him—since they both knew that Severus wouldn't feel in the mood to celebrate Beltane—he really should get out there and start saying things and shaking hands.

Severus's gaze fell away from his. For a moment, he looked at his wrist. Harry looked, too. There were faint gleams of light there, the ribbons manifesting, as they had on Ostara, too.

And then Severus turned and said, "You have others to welcome," and stalked away from him as though Harry had been the one to end things.

Harry rubbed his forehead, the scar that never hurt anymore except when he was having moments like this, and went to stand beside Hermione, and smile as his family and friends trickled in. Andromeda was there with Teddy, and he ran up and hugged Harry around the legs, beaming and smiling up into his face with so much warmth that Harry couldn't resist. He grabbed Teddy and held him close. When he glanced at Andromeda, he saw her watching them both with an understanding smile.

"He's being difficult again, isn't he?" Andromeda asked quietly.

And sometimes Harry didn't welcome the ability that his family and friends had to see into his heart. He shrugged and held Teddy closer. "Let's go and look at one of those ribbon-clusters, okay?" he asked. "You can make a wish."

"I want to be good at Potions!" Teddy tugged him hard towards the nearest tree. "Like Severus is!"

Harry grimaced and closed his eyes. But at least Teddy couldn't see into his heart the same way Andromeda could. For now, that would have to do.

Not that having someone who could see into your heart was always painful. But you had to be careful how they did it.

**Samhain, 2004**

Harry carefully arranged the salt and the bowl of lilies in front of him, self-conscious about it. They sat on the middle of a red cloth that Harry had made himself, although it had taken him fucking forever. In fact, he had worked on it for more than a year, and only barely finished it in time for last Samhain. The kind of ritual acknowledgement of the dead that he wanted to perform worked best when he had a hand-woven cloth, made by the hand of the person who was going to do the ritual, and Harry had cared enough to get it right. But he was glad that he hadn't had the task to do over again this year.

_As if I would have had time, with my studies. _

Harry held back his snort as he stepped away from the cloth and picked up his wand. He didn't go anywhere for this particular celebration, not even to the graveyard at Godric's Hollow where his parents lay. He visited them during plenty of other parts of the year, and since he actually lived in Godric's Hollow itself, it wasn't as though he was far from their graves.

Law studies were fun, but exhausting. Harry had to spend hours with his head down in books, hours listening to lectures from Hermione, and hours visiting solicitors and barristers and clerks and Ministry flunkies and everyone in between, everyone who held some scrap of knowledge that he needed to know.

But he needed to take some time out, too, and Harry thought Hermione would be pleased to know that he was doing so on Samhain, the older version of Halloween, the day to honor the dead.

Harry raised his wand. He had already gone through a private little ceremony for Sirius and Dumbledore earlier that day; he always saved the late-night ceremony for his parents. There wasn't much light from the moon overhead, since clouds covered the sky, but that didn't matter. Harry had the garden covered with an awning charm, which meant nothing would get wet.

"May I join you?"

Harry jumped and spun around. _Fuck _Severus. Did he always have to interrupt just as Harry was about to do something for himself? He had a habit of coming into the library to interrupt Harry's studying, too, or the kitchen to interrupt his meals. At least he had never asked Harry to help him test another potion. He seemed to know that was off-limits.

On the other hand, it would have been disastrous had he entered in the actual middle of the ceremony, and Harry thought that he probably knew that, and that was why he was here before. Severus stood in the back doorway of the house, a small bundle folded in his arms.

Harry blinked a little as he realized that he and Severus hadn't discussed this particular holiday at all. Harry had thought it would be like Lammas. Severus either had no reason to care about the day, no reason to interrupt his brewing, or he would conduct his own private ceremonies, and Harry would conduct his.

Maybe not so private. Harry studied the bundle in Severus's arms, and recognized part of it. The black cloth looked like the one he had his own ritual supplies spread out on, even though it was a different color. And it looked like Snape was a much better stitcher than Harry, to create the delicate embroidery of white along the edge of the black.

White flowers. _Lilies_.

Harry straightened his back. Severus might have his dead to mourn, but Harry didn't want him here, not when Severus's mourning for James would be nonexistent. "I don't mind if you do the ceremony," Harry said, "but not with me. Somewhere else. Later."

Severus didn't move, although his jaw clamped slightly shut. He looked a little like he had the night that Harry had told him off for presuming the blue ribbon of the Mabon vow had something to do with him. "We share some of the same dead," he said.

"I already mourned Dumbledore earlier," Harry said shortly. He longed to just say _Go away, you hated my dad and I don't want you interfering, _but the pain in Severus's face kept him silent.

Ron thought he was too soft on Severus. Maybe so. Even with all the frustrations of the handfasting and being celibate for a year, Harry had just seen Severus's face in too many different ways now, with too many different expressions on it. It was hard to disregard someone you'd seen like that.

"I would not—interfere—with your rites of mourning for your father," Severus said delicately, and that had to be the nicest way Harry had ever heard him refer to James Potter. "But I thought we could share the mourning for your mother."

Harry hesitated. Other than the mass ritual of mourning he had taken part in with the Weasleys a few years ago, the ritual that had convinced him he was better off doing his in private, he had never had someone with personal reason to mourn one of his parents like Severus had.

But still, only one. Harry shook his head again. "I don't want you saying anything about my dad. Besides, with you here, and remembering how much you hated him…" He trailed off when Severus just stood there, silent, stubborn. Honestly, Harry would have thought he'd have given up long before now. "It's just—I want to do this alone."

"There is more than one kind of mourning," said Severus. "I did not care for your father, that is true."

Harry tried to snort. It came out rather breathless.

"But through inciting the Dark Lord to attack your parents, I was the instrument of his death." Severus had not moved, although the moonlight seemed to glisten in his eyes more than usual. "That means that I might owe him a debt of grief, in a way."

Harry looked at him, but he didn't know what else to say. He just nodded and said, "But put your cloth down a little ways from mine. I celebrated with the Weasleys the first year and—and I couldn't hear what they were saying." Then he started tending to his cloth one more time, so Severus couldn't see his face.

From the corner of his eye, he watched as Severus spread his black cloth on the grass so that the embroideries of the lilies fanned out to the sides. Then he stood up and laid his own bunch of fresh lilies down in the middle of the cloth, and took out something that looked like a bowl made of ebony. He poured water into it, or maybe a potion, from a flask he carried at his hip.

Harry frowned and glanced away. Just because they had both chosen lilies to honor his mother didn't mean they cared about her in the exact same way, he told himself. It was a natural choice for a woman named Lily.

But for his father, Harry had the Marauder's Map. He had no idea what Severus had for James. It was weird sharing the mourning for his parents like this. Harry didn't know that he liked it.

He heard Severus finish pouring his potion, and cap the flask again. Then he stood back, and stood there in silence. It took Harry several minutes to realize that Severus was waiting for him to begin the ceremony, which was his right, as the one who had a blood connection to the dead people being mourned.

Harry swept his wand in a long circle, with blue sparks trailing it. For a moment, they looked like the blue flames that had consumed the little straw figure when he made his Mabon vow. He swallowed, and managed to bring himself to ignore the resemblance.

"Spirits of the dead," he whispered, his voice rising as he slipped back into the words of the ceremony he had performed before. "Accept the gifts I bring you, gifts that would have meant something to you when you were alive."

Severus shifted off to the side, but didn't say anything. That heartened Harry. If he could resist the temptation to say something sharp about how their gifts would have _mattered _to James, then he might be able to keep silent when he wasn't wanted to speak through the rest of it.

"This was a holiday for the dead," Harry said. "We, the living, make it into something new. We are not the ancient wizards, and do not celebrate as they do, but in our own way." He laid his wand against his arm. "And in this case, we give up a trace of our life in order to pacify the dead, and hear them speak."

He cut his arm as he spoke, nonverbally. It had taken him time to learn how to do that spell without speaking, but he'd practiced before his first Samhain. He didn't want to mess up the ritual when he was actually doing it.

The blood spilled down the side of his arm. Harry tilted it, and it landed in the middle of the small pile of salt that he'd put on the corner of the red cloth.

In his peripheral vision, he saw Severus cutting his arm with the same spell. He, however, took care to guide the blood into the ebony bowl that he had filled with his potion or water or whatever it was.

The liquid inside the bowl smoked and bubbled, and a red boil rose to the surface, rapidly growing. Harry thought he could hear low, angry tones coming from the bubble, and started. He had never been able to hear the dead speak before, except the ones he had specifically summoned and given his blood.

Severus swept his wand around again, this time trailed by white sparks, casting a spell that Harry didn't know. The blood-bubble broke, and the angry voice faded. Severus spoke into the silence where it had been, his tone strong and solemn.

"I claim no blood-right to speak to you, but the debts of life and death, and the right of long-dead affection, and the right of handfasting to one who has blood-right." He glanced sideways at Harry.

Harry reckoned that he was supposed to go on with his part of the ritual, as strange as this was. With shaking hands, he turned and cast the next spell above the mingled salt and blood.

They rustled, moving together, a sound that was far greater than that caused merely by the pouring of salt or the dripping of blood down his arm. Harry frowned and concentrated. He didn't remember them doing this last time, although it was only the second time he had cast this particular spell, since he had finished weaving this cloth.

"I claim blood-right to speak with you," he whispered. His voice was too low after Severus's, or it sounded that way, but he took a deep breath and went on. "I am your son, left behind by you when you died. I have laid down the salt for purity and the blood that the dead crave. Let me hear the voices of Lily and James Potter!"

At the end, his voice soared, and was too loud. Harry winced and resisted the temptation to either cover up his ears or glance at Severus. He didn't need the snicker or the humiliation that would result from either action.

The blood and the salt stirred again, and twined around each other. Harry thought he could hear whispering voice speaking, in the moments before the salt turned pure red and caught on fire.

And _that _hadn't happened before, either. Harry suppressed the temptation to flee. This wouldn't get easier if he did that. He controlled his impulses to stand still, and the flames flickered and turned blue and then red and then golden.

Out of it came the voice of his mother, singing a lullaby that Harry suspected she must have sung when he was a baby.

Harry closed his eyes tightly, the better to focus on her voice. It sounded nothing like the one that haunted his worst memories, called up by the Dementors, the voice that had screamed and defied Voldemort. This was gentle and simple and sweet, and always with laughter and love at the back of it.

Then she was talking about Sirius, and saying, "Are you _sure _that Sirius wants to be a godfather? It's a big responsibility."

"I'm sure," said a man's voice, his father's voice. Harry swallowed and tried not to contemplate the strangeness of standing here in his back garden and listening to it with the man his father had bullied, who was indirectly responsible for his parents' deaths. He tried instead to memorize the voice, the crisp accent of it and the background of what sounded like laughter, although it had to come from James, who was speaking and not laughing at the moment. The spell wouldn't let Harry hear anything but the voices of the dead, so even if he was there and laughing, nothing would come through. "He said that he loves Harry more than he ever did any of his own family."

Harry did have to sneak a glance at Severus at that. He stood there, rigid, his jaw working. Well, the mention of Sirius would still do that to him, Harry had found.

"I know that, and I know what Sirius's love is worth." His mum's voice was slow and sad. "But I still want to make sure that he'll treat Harry right, and that he knows what we're asking of him."

"Of course he'll treat him right." James was laughing, and Harry could hear him making mumbling noises a moment later that were probably meant to be directed towards Harry's baby-self. "I always know when he means to play a prank, and he doesn't look that way this time."

Harry could hear Lily sigh, and then she said, "Well. All right. It's not that I don't want him to be godfather, James. But I wish—I wish my—I wish someone from my family, or a friend of mine, could be his godmother."

"I know, Lils. I know who you want. I know."

Harry could hear his parents moving closer together, and the way their voices murmured together, and he shuddered a little. Then he turned and looked at Severus, hardly knowing why.

Severus was retracting his hand back to his side. If he had extended it to cast another spell, Harry didn't know. He didn't think that he had to know. He gazed steadfastly at Severus instead, and Severus nodded and turned to the ebony bowl.

This time, Harry didn't know if something he had done had ignited the liquid in the bowl, or if they had merely reached that point in the ceremony. He only knew that the liquid began to leap and flame, and then suddenly shot out of the bowl, until it was a tower higher than Severus, and glittered.

"Severus. Severus Snape." That was his father's voice, Harry knew it was after listening to the way that he talked from Harry's part of the ritual, but measured and gloating. "What are we going to do with you? What is it going to be today? The branch, or the pool?"

Severus seemed to shrink as he listened. Harry swallowed, and moved nearer. He wanted the voice to stop. This was his dad, he knew that, but he had mistakenly thought that Severus's sacrifice of blood would conjure up a conversation like the one he had heard. It seemed that wouldn't be happening.

"Leave him alone!" And that was his mum, her voice clear and young, the way Harry had heard it in Severus's Pensieve in fifth year.

"I don't see what business this is of yours, Evans. _You _leave _us _alone."

"It's my business because Severus is my friend, and he isn't—"

"He isn't your _friend_. Not if you're a Gryffindor. You said that you were a Gryffindor! You promised us! You promised that you wouldn't spend time with Slytherins anymore!"

There was a silence filled with the sound of breathing, and then Lily's voice said calmly, "Only the Slytherins who want to kill me. And that doesn't include Severus."

"Well, then I suppose you don't know what spellbooks your precious _Severus _has been taking out of the library—"

"I was with him."

Silence again, and then James's voice whispered, "What?"

"I was with him. They weren't that kind of spellbooks. I'm sorry to find you think they were." There was the sound of Lily's voice retreating, and Harry imagined her walking away from James, maybe with an arm around Severus's shoulders, although he couldn't know because those sounds weren't part of her voice. "Come on, Severus. I think that we should find a place where we can be alone with these books that so many people think are filled with Dark Arts, and _study _them."

The column of flame retreated into the bowl, and Severus stood there, dazed. Fine tremors worked through the hand that he lifted as though to knock back his fringe from his forehead. Then he saw Harry watching him, and he grimaced and lowered his hand back to his side. When he stooped to pick up the ebony bowl, Harry saw that it was cracked.

"I should not have done that," Severus whispered to everyone and no one. "I could not have expected the conversation to be happy."

"Next year, you don't have to," Harry offered tentatively. "You can talk to your dead, and I'll listen if you want."

Severus turned sharply around, staring. Harry didn't know why—it seemed a reasonable offer to make to him, when it wasn't like Severus would ever hear something happy from Harry's dad's voice—when Severus said, "_Next _year?"

Harry paused. Right. They wouldn't be handfasted then. They would have no reason to spend any holidays together, but especially not this one, which was private and for the dead and the people who mourned them. He shook his head and turned away. "Sorry."

But Severus caught up with him before he could reach his red cloth and fold it. The lilies were gone, burned up, but Harry paused in brushing away the ashes as Severus's hand caught his arm.

"I do not know if the event will match your promise," Severus breathed. "But never think that I do not appreciate the promise."

Harry turned and stared at him. His first thought was that he had never seen Severus this open, and he wondered if it was the voices of the dead that had done it.

The next thought that came to him was that of _course _the voices of the dead had done it. Severus had just heard the voice of his dead best friend and the voice of the man who had tortured him for years. Harry would be stupid to hold him to any promise made tonight, when he was suffering from that sort of openness.

But wasn't Samhain also a night of border-crossings, border-openings?

Harry leaned in and kissed Severus on the cheek, placing a hand on his forehead at the same time. Severus started a little, and seemed as if he might back away. Harry stepped back before he could, smiled at him, and said, "Then I'll consider myself bound to keep the promise, if you want me to. Handfasting or no handfasting. Let's clean up here." He turned around, shook the ashes and the few remaining grains of salt off his red cloth, and began to fold it. All the blood was burned away as if it had never been.

There was some silence, and then Severus turned away sharply and began to fold his own black cloth.

They walked back into the house together. Perhaps that was only a coincidence, perhaps it came from the fact that they were both shaken and wanted comfort, perhaps it had nothing to do with the handfasting at all. But Harry took it for a promising sign nevertheless.

**Beltane Eve, 2005**

"And I want to be good at Potions, and I want to have all kinds of adventures, and…"

Teddy was babbling away as he clutched the Beltane ribbons in his hands and waved them around. Harry smiled down at him with what he knew was a besotted expression. Well, Teddy was the only child he would ever have, likely. And while he loved Victoire and Dominique and Louis, and he thought he would love the other Weasley children when they got around to being born, too, Teddy was special.

Teddy finally couldn't think of anything else he wanted to ask the Beltane ribbons far, and carefully wrapped them back around the branch he'd taken them from. Harry helped him, standing up and patiently putting them where Teddy directed when Teddy ran out of patience and height for doing it himself. Then they turned around. Harry meant to go back to one of the big bonfires and get a bowl of the stew he could smell bubbling there.

Except that someone was blocking his way. Harry pulled to a stop, heart hammering and hand going automatically to his wand.

"Harry."

_Severus_. Harry shook his head and took his hand off his wand. "Sorry," he murmured, his automatic excuse when he did something like that. "I didn't realize you were there, and then you just loomed up between me and the light of the fire…"

He realized that he sounded like Teddy, and shrugged, looking away. But now that he knew Severus was there, he could feel the intent, calm gaze on him.

"Teddy, why don't you go and find your Aunt Hermione?" Severus asked. "Harry and I have something to talk about now."

Normally, suggesting something like that to Teddy when he wanted to spend time with Harry was productive of a kicking and shrieking fit. But Teddy really did obey Severus better than he did almost anyone else, and he nodded amiably and trotted away. Harry folded his arms and bent his head, concentrating fiercely on the ground in front of him.

"Harry."

Harry flinched in spite of himself, and turned around. "What?" he whisper-snapped. "Do you think that you can spare me for these last few days that we'll be handfasted? I know that you don't want the handfasting to endure, while I do. I _know_. So let's not pretend that we're going to be bound any longer than Beltane lasts, all right?"

Severus's eyes were hard. "I do not want to be bound this way, no," he said. "The nature of the bond was accidental, and I do not like that. It has caused me several inconveniences. We have had misunderstandings between us that I cannot forget."

"And we're about to have another one, if you don't get the hell out of my way," Harry hissed sharply, enough that he thought he sounded like Voldemort.

Looking into his eyes, Severus seemed to decide that he did mean that, but he still hesitated for a long time before stepping out of the way. Harry promptly caught up with Teddy and grabbed them both bowls of stew, then led Teddy over to the table where Molly stood guard over a host of cakes and sweets. She normally didn't want the children to have any until they had eaten a full meal, but Harry would be able to swipe some. And right now, he needed a sweet taste in his mouth.

"You're all right?" Teddy peered worriedly up at him. "Harry?"

Harry managed to calm down and smile at Teddy. "Yeah, I am. Sure, I am." He picked Teddy up, although it was hard to balance both him and their bowls, and went to sit down in a shadowed corner. "Let's eat and discuss what kind of adventure you're going to have tonight. Do you want to ride the dragon tonight?"

Teddy giggled. Harry usually put him to sleep at night by telling him a long story of the adventures of Teddy the Terrible sailing at sea, or riding a dragon, or taming deadly beasts, but Teddy liked the dragon best.

"The dragon!" he said.

Harry nodded and thought a minute to pick up the story where he had left it, and what was going to come next. "Right. So, Teddy the Terrible found the red dragon's egg, and it was going to hatch! He watched it rocking, all the red spots on it, and he found that he was shivering, and he opened his eyes as wide as they would go…"

Harry could feel Severus's eyes on him across the clearing, piercing through the shivering light of the flames into his shadowy hiding spot. He ignored them effortlessly. If Severus had wanted to be with him, he'd had the chance to make the bond permanent.

He'd even had the chance, the moment, when both of them reached towards each other and found what they thought was a willing embrace waiting. The chance at Midwinter.

**Midwinter, 2004**

Harry hesitated a long time in front of the shelves in the apothecary. At one point he stretched out a hand towards a jar of what looked like pickled beetles floating in dung, and then snatched it back.

Then he scowled at himself. What he was doing was far more childish than the impulse that had brought him to the shop in the first place.

Resolutely setting his shoulders straight, he picked up the jar and turned towards the counter. The owner of the apothecary, a wizard with an eyepatch and burn scars on the left side of his face, gave him an incurious glance that didn't change even when he saw Harry's lightning bolt scar.

When he saw the _jar_ Harry was carrying, though, he straightened up and sucked in his breath. Harry stopped, heart buzzing. "What is it?" he asked, wondering if he had somehow managed to choose the one set of illegal ingredients in a mostly legitimate apothecary, or if the description in Severus's Potions books had led him astray. He barely understood the books anyway. "Is something wrong?"

"Do you know what those are?" The apothecary was whispering, one finger pointing at the jar.

"Um," said Harry. "Not really." The description in the Potions books had been confusing enough that he only knew they had once been insects, and that the liquid they were pickled or floating in made them magically powerful.

"Those are Beetles of the Sun, so they are." The apothecary's voice was reverent as he took the jar and turned it over in his hands. Harry told himself sharply not to take it back. The apothecary wasn't going to steal it. He could have taken it at any time if he wanted to. It was in _his _shop. "I'd almost forgotten we had them. They're so expensive…"

Harry picked up his courage. The apothecary probably knew Harry was handfasted to Severus, because most of the wizarding world did, but he didn't seem to care much about who Harry actually _was, _so he also might not care who Harry was buying these for. "So they would make a good gift for a Potions master?"

The apothecary cackled, suddenly enough that Harry was glad he wasn't holding the jar of the Beetles of the Sun anymore. He would have dropped them. "I'd say so, laddie! The potions you can make with these, the warmth they can create without a fire, the sweet taste they can bring to even the worst-tasting pain potion…" The apothecary caressed the jar again. "But it's not every potions brewer who can use them correctly. The magic in them only comes out with the right training in crushing them, see? It only responds to the powerful."

Harry relaxed. That described Severus all over. "I'll take them, then."

The price did make his hands falter as they reached for the Galleons he'd brought, but no matter. If Severus knew how expensive they were, he might even appreciate them more.

He might appreciate them, period, Harry thought, as he stepped out of the shop with the jar of the Beetles of the Sun clutched in his hand.

_ He might appreciate me._

But Harry refused to allow the thought to spend much time in his head, turning and striding energetically for the Apparition point.

* * *

"Severus?"

Harry stepped into the house and looked around, frowning. He hadn't expected immediate acknowledgement; at this time of day, Severus would be in his Potions lab, and there would be only a robe draped on a chair or a newspaper placed under, or maybe over, a cooling cup of tea, whatever he had abandoned when his latest idea took him. Harry could reserve his gift for later; he'd already safely stowed it away in a cupboard he knew about and Severus didn't.

But there was no sign of Severus's presence in the kitchen, or the ground-floor room that had become Severus's study, or the small bedroom where Ron sometimes stayed when he was too drunk to Apparate or Floo safely. Harry worked his way slowly up the staircase, wondering if Severus was asleep in his own bedroom, or if he would see the door of the Potions lab locked.

No. The door of the lab was open. And there was no sign of Severus in his bedroom, or the library, or the drawing room, or the bathroom. His heart pounding, Harry drew his wand, and called again. "Severus?"

No hum of broken wards. But there didn't have to be, Harry thought grimly. He'd had a few old enemies attack him immediately after he left the Aurors and moved to Godric's Hollow, because they thought he was vulnerable now that he didn't have the Ministry wards or the protections of Grimmauld Place around him. Harry had swiftly disabused them of that notion, but he wondered if the recent public announcement about him beginning his training as a lawyer had changed things again.

Then Harry realized there was one place he hadn't checked yet: his own bedroom. Severus would have no reason to enter it, but if there was an intruder in the house, or something had happened to Severus, there might be clues waiting for him there.

He made his way with slow steps to his bedroom, wand still drawn. He tried to keep his footsteps as silent as possible, even as he convinced himself that Severus might have stepped out to the shops, or still be at work—even though this was a day when he had his shop closed so that he could work on potions that involved wands—or have suddenly recollected a birthday party he needed to visit, or, well, anything.

He didn't do a good job of convincing himself, which was probably the reason why he jumped when he peered around the door of his bedroom and found Severus standing there.

Harry stared. Severus stared. Of the two of them, he seemed to feel he was the one who didn't need to explain himself. He just stood by Harry's bed with his arms folded, and the most forbidding look on his face that Harry had seen outside his sixth year at Hogwarts.

But it was obvious that he wasn't going to speak first, either about why he hadn't responded when Harry was calling his name or about the large, flat, white envelope decorated with red ribbons that he had leaned against Harry's pillow. So Harry put his wand away and did it for him. "What the fuck?"

Severus jerked a little at the term, and his face flushed. Then he looked towards the envelope on the bed, which meant he was looking _at _the bed. Harry flushed himself, but he still didn't retreat. "Answer me, damn it," he added. "And why didn't you before? I was about ready to think that Death Eaters had taken you."

"I was trying to come up with a Midwinter gift for you," Severus snapped. "Trust you to ruin it all."

Harry blinked and looked at the envelope again. Rather small for a book, which was the only thing he could think of that Severus might deem worthy of a Midwinter gift. Even then… "How did I ruin it?"

Severus shifted from having his arms folded to having his hands clasped in front of him. It didn't work to stop Harry from looking at him, if that was what he had intended. Neither did making his face still colder. Harry waited.

"_Fine_," Severus bit out at last, and as long as it made his eyes shine that way, as if he were alive, Harry didn't care about his anger. "I was going to give you several days alone, so that you could bring your friends to the house and hold your Midwinter celebration here. I planned to stay in my flat above the shop, as before." Before the handfasting, Harry thought, as Severus brandished his wrist. "A few days would not touch this—false marriage."

Harry spoke before he thought. "And why would that make a good gift?" He had left the Beetles of the Sun downstairs, but at least he knew that _he _had chosen a good present, one that Severus could actually want. "And what's in the envelope?" He pointed at it again.

"I left a note so that you would not _worry _about me." Severus spoke the word like a martyr to Harry's smothering concern, even though Harry had tried as hard as possible to maintain civility and peace the last few months. "And it is obvious that you do not want me around during your celebrations."

Harry stared some more. "Samhain was the last one we shared," he said, when he could find his tongue. "What gave you the impression I didn't _want you around_?"

"Because you talked about gifts," said Severus. He had gone back to being a statue. Or imitating a statue, maybe, because Harry couldn't live with someone more than half a year without picking up on some things about them, and Severus had this twitch of one nostril that got going when he thought someone was being obtuse. Harry watched, and said nothing, which got him more words. "About the presence of family. About the happy atmosphere that you wished to enjoy. To _that_ I have nothing to contribute."

Harry shook his head, a bubble of something warm and thick in his throat. He wanted to suppress it because he knew it might not come out the right way and alienate Severus further, but his words leaped out of him the minute Severus stopped speaking. Well, maybe Severus deserved words in return. "You right idiot," he finally said, roughly, while Severus started at him in suspicion. "I include you in family. I got you a gift, and so did some of the Weasleys, but no one expected you to get _us _gifts if you'd rather not. And I want you to be happy, but I thought you'd go upstairs and brew in your lab or something if the kids got to be too much for you. It's not meant—it's not meant to exile you from your _home_."

Severus's hands closed so suddenly and sharply on air that Harry jumped again. Then he whispered, "You misunderstand me if you think I wish to be a part of that."

Harry nodded. "Fine then. Go away if you like. But don't present it as a _gift _to me. It's not."

Severus looked as if he wished he had another hand he could clench into a fist for the proper dramatic gesture. "You are placing it in a light that I did not intend."

"Don't I always do that?" Harry lounged against the door. He wondered if Severus had noticed yet that he was blocking the main way out. "Do whatever the fuck you want. But don't stand there and tell me that it's for me. If you'd paid the slightest bit of attention on Samhain, you would have noticed I wanted you there. And I want you here when you want to leave, sometimes, to ask questions of and have arguments with and tease. You don't want to be around me all the time. I can certainly understand that. But I want you here more than I want you away."

Severus recoiled. Harry winced. He hadn't thought Severus's hatred of the handfasting was _that _deep.

"I am trying to do something you want," Severus whispered, voice unexpectedly soft. "I am trying to give you something you may not realize you want yourself."

"Is this going to be another of those conversations where you try to present yourself as the older, wiser adult and I remind you that I'm grown up and I can make my own decisions?" Harry shook his head sadly. "I was tired of those years ago." They'd had more of them recently, though, with Severus making abrupt, elliptical statements about the things he expected Harry to do when the handfasting was over, and Harry trying to reassure him, without saying it this openly in case he startled Severus into running or made him feel pressured, that he would like Severus to stick around when the handfasting was over. But Harry hadn't thought it was leading up to _this_.

"Yes, when you were eleven, I have no doubt," Severus said, and that was one of the _least _convincing sneers Harry had ever seen from him. "But nonetheless, it is true. You have your life ahead of you. You do not want to spend time with someone like me, no matter how much you think you do."

Harry straightened. "What I find more infuriating than anything else," he said cheerfully, "is being told that I don't know my own mind."

"I am merely saying—"

"People told me I didn't know my own mind about becoming an Auror," Harry said. "About fighting against Voldemort. About being the Heir of Slytherin. About going back to Hogwarts for one final year, instead of doing private tutoring for my NEWTS. About testifying at those Death Eater trials." He saw from the flash of Severus's eyes that _that _one had gone home. "About quitting the Aurors. About becoming a lawyer. About breaking up with Ginny. About handfasting with you. Every other day there's some bloody story in the _Prophet _about how the poor little Chosen One, he doesn't know what's good for him, or he would be doing _something else_." Harry dropped the false cheerfulness and leaned forwards. "I'm tired of hearing it in in my own home."

"Your home. Mine only for the year. You have not considered—"

"I've thought about it more than you know." Harry stepped forwards. "You're not in my head."

"I pick up on your thoughts from mere surface Legilimency. You have never properly tried to close your mind—"

"Because I prefer it open." Harry came closer. There was really only a small strip of carpet parting them now, at least physically. "I know what I want. Perhaps it's not always wise, and if it's hurting you, then I want you to know that I would rather have you back off, the way you can leave if the Midwinter celebration here would hurt you too much. But I _don't want _to drive you away. And I _don't want_ you to stand there sanctimoniously prattling on to me about what I want and don't want. I know a little better than you."

Severus gaped at him. Harry expected a lot of responses, but not, "When did you learn the word _sanctimoniously_?"

"Did you listen to a word I said?" Harry demanded. He knew how Severus would respond before he did, and added, "_Any other _word I said."

"I heard you," Severus said. His eyes had gone deep and contemplative, almost the way they had looked on Samhain—or Beltane. He held out one hand as though he was cupping the jar of the Beetles of the Sun that Harry had got him. "You got me a gift?"

Harry hesitated just once, because he had wanted to give Severus the gift on Midwinter Day itself, but that was long enough to make Severus nod briskly, drop his hand, and open his mouth to say something sharp and clever and wrong.

Harry sighed and said, "_Accio _jar."

The apothecary had wrapped up the jar securely enough that Harry didn't even wince when it zoomed up through several doorways and settled into his hands. Severus winced enough for both of them, seemingly unable to take his eyes away from the yellow glass showing above the wrappings.

"That cannot be what it looks like," he whispered.

"You're right," Harry said, undoing some of the cloth bindings. "Because it looked like insect corpses in liquid dung to me, but the apothecary assured me it wasn't."

Severus was beside him in a moment, reaching out a trembling hand to touch the jar. For long, long seconds, Harry thought he was going to neither blink nor move, ever again. Harry cleared his throat. "Would you two like to be alone?"

Severus turned to face him.

And Harry swallowed. Apparently the way to a Slytherin's heart was through gifts. Very expensive gifts.

Either that, or this had been what Severus needed to reassure himself that Harry wasn't lying about him not needing to leave the house. Because he reached out, placed a hand on Harry's shoulder much the way he had on the jar, and said, "I cannot return the generosity. I did not have an idea of another gift for you, and I have not bought one. And I do not care enough about the Weasleys to find out what they would like."

"I know that," Harry said, holding his eyes. "I don't care."

"But now I _believe _that you do not," Severus breathed, and leaned forwards.

Harry met the kiss as gently as though Severus shimmered with the blue flames of Harry's Mabon vow, as though he had the bleeding cut they had both made on Samhain, as though they were at this moment above one of the Beltane fires. And Severus met him back, so wary that it might not have qualified as a kiss except for the pressure of lips on his, the kiss that Severus had offered and Harry would take.

It lasted only until the jar shifted in Harry's arms, and Severus stepped back and said sharply, "The beetles will be useless if you drop it!"

Harry found himself grinning, recklessly. _There _was the man he wanted.

**Beltane Eve, 205**

"And Teddy the Terrible and the dragon soared off into the sky," Harry finished the story with a soft sigh, running his fingers through Teddy's hair. He had drifted off to sleep, still holding onto Harry's leg. His breathing was soft and regular, and Harry felt as if his heart was going to explode. This was different from the last Beltane Eve, sure, which Teddy hadn't been able to attend because he was sick, but this was a lot better. Maybe if Teddy _had _been at the last one, Harry wouldn't have been mad for the next day's holiday, and thus mad enough to sleep with Severus.

"Harry. A word."

Severus was the only person Harry knew capable of coming up to someone with his sleeping godson in his lap and talking to him like that, like Teddy wasn't even there and didn't even matter. Harry turned a glare on him, not getting up or removing Teddy from his lap. Severus would just have to get used to the fact that Harry wasn't going to move him. "Yes? You wanted something, Severus?"

"I want to talk to you about the handfasting." Severus opened his mouth to continue, and Harry realized that he apparently was going to just keep talking about it, even with the chances of Teddy waking up, if Harry didn't move.

Luckily, Andromeda had been drifting towards them, and Harry could at least pick up the sleeping Teddy—he was an expert at not waking him, by now—and hold him towards his grandmother. "Will you take care of him for me?" he asked Andromeda, looking only at her and not at Severus.

"Of course," said Andromeda, and looked at him for a second, a glance so full of pointed meaning Harry would have to be blind to ignore it. He grimaced back at her, and Andromeda sighed and moved off. She seemed to think that Severus lent some stability to Harry's life, and stability was what Teddy needed his godfather to have, really needed all the adults in his life to have.

Harry could understand her position, but honestly, he didn't see how he could have any more stability right now. Yes, he had changed his career and a lot about his way of living in the last year, but the handfasting had been one of those big changes. Keeping it around wouldn't make things more stable. In fact, it would mean that he and Severus fought more, and Harry didn't want to expose Teddy to those fights.

Not that it mattered. Severus sat beside Harry and said, "I do not wish to continue the handfasting."

"I know that." Harry reminded himself that he had faced down a basilisk when he was twelve and ought to be able to face down his lover when he was twice that age. He turned and looked at Severus. "Will you want help in moving your things out of the house and back to your flat?" There. That was a nice, mature question. He didn't think anyone could fault him for the _way _he had asked it, either.

Severus's face worked. "You do not _understand _me," he said.

"I _understand _you all right," Harry said, feeling a slight, bitter satisfaction that someone who scolded him often for acting young was doing the same thing, talking like a teenager, and stood and stalked away. Hermione frowned at him when he detoured to pick up a glass of Firewhisky, but Teddy was in good hands now, and it was late enough that he would probably sleep for the rest of the evening. Harry tilted the glass back and swallowed enough Firewhisky to make the back of his throat burn.

It was probably all his fault and his bloody stupid idea about the Imbolc party, anyway.

**Imbolc, 2005**

"We are having a party for Imbolc?" Severus had come home late from the shop, where he had apparently acquired a burned hand trying to help a particularly foolish boy bond better with his wand. Harry knew better than to ask for more details than that. It tired Severus to explain them, and it bored Harry to listen. Just like Severus knew the barest details of his own training in law, and the latest abuses and injustices he had uncovered, sometimes they got along better without talking.

Unfortunately, they did have to talk about _this_.

"Well, if you want one," Harry said, and stirred his bowl of beef broth when Severus stared at him. Harry had been feeling sick the past few days, a headache and faint pain in his forehead and neck, and Kreacher had insisted on making this bloody stuff. "It's a holiday that the Weasleys don't celebrate. Molly doesn't see much point in it. She says it's never the beginning of spring until the leaves are fully out, anyway. She likes Ostara better." He looked up and gave Severus a hopeful smile.

Severus said nothing for long enough that Harry finished almost the whole bowl of beef broth, and Kreacher only came from the kitchen to glare at him two times. Then he said, "You wish us to have a party on a day that matters to no one else?"

The tone of his voice was enough to tell Harry that he had fucked up _again_, although how he had done it this time, he really didn't know. Nonetheless, it seemed to be a talent of his. He swore bitterly and dropped his spoon in the soup.

"I wanted to have a holiday that you and I could share with each other, and no one else," he snapped, standing up. "I haven't succeeded in that, and Merlin knows how I've offended you this time. I'll just go up and we can pretend that we have two separate houses until you feel like talking again, how's that?"

Severus had stood and come around the table, standing in the doorway of the kitchen, so that Harry couldn't get out. That was so unusual that Harry paused and blinked at him. Severus put a hand on Harry's shoulder—deliciously cool in contrast to Harry's slightly flushed skin—and murmured, "You misunderstand me. I phrased it that way, but I was thinking of it in the way you mentioned."

Harry jerked his head back and glared. "Yes, well, I'll always misunderstand you unless you start fucking _talking _to me!"

That ought to have been the start of a fine row, but again Severus surprised him. "I can think of all _sorts _of things I would rather do," he breathed, and lowered his mouth to Harry's.

Harry nearly pulled away, nearly warned Severus about his sickness, nearly protested, nearly said that this was ridiculous, nearly did all sorts of things, until his common sense snatched him back.

Severus had brewed him some fever-reducing potions and another that had taken care of Harry's cough. He knew all about the sickness, and obviously wanted to risk it anyway.

Severus didn't do ridiculous things, or things that were obviously protestable. So he meant this, and Harry would be an idiot to give up what he had wanted for a while.

He formed his hands into claws, just in case Severus had any notion of withdrawing, and clenched his nails down into the flesh of Severus's shoulders. Severus grunted but didn't pull back even then, maybe because of Harry's grip but maybe because he was wearing robes that dulled the pain a bit.

And he did most of the work to propel Harry up the stairs and towards the bedrooms. Harry didn't know which one he'd chosen until his back hit his own bed and Severus trailed one hand down Harry's breastbone. The cloth parted under his touch, sliding and shedding away as though Severus had Transfigured his nails into claws.

Harry saw it and laughed, breathlessly. "Nice spell."

"I am rather good at the nonverbal," Severus said, and kissed him again to prove it.

There was more proving, which involved more shredding of Harry's clothes, and Severus taking off his own with such simple fussiness that Harry thought it would wear away the heat between them into exasperation. It didn't. Harry just panted harder, and Severus gave him a look that tried to reach contempt and couldn't.

"_You_ are not often this nonverbal," Severus murmured.

"There are times that you just shut up and take what's offered," Harry said, and turned over and spread his legs out, widely, arching his arse towards Severus to see what would happen.

It sounded like Severus was choking on his own tongue, was what would happen. Harry buried his face in the pillow, grinning.

"You are doing this on purpose," Severus whispered, as if he had just now awakened to that conclusion.

"You suppose that?" Harry pushed his face into the bed and arched his back some more, wondering if he could make Severus say more inane things.

What happened now was a hand slamming down in the middle of his back, and Severus conjuring some slick potion to cover his fingers, or maybe just pulling it from his pocket. Harry wouldn't know, since he was lying on his stomach. He did know that Severus had either stopped undressing or would have to fly through the rest of it. There was no way he could have finished, the pace he was going, when Harry had rolled over.

That didn't seem to stop him from moving forwards now. He was actually muttering to himself, a stream of nonsense words. Harry didn't think he'd made Severus have that reaction in the near-year they'd lived together. Even that first disastrous morning after the handfasting, Severus had had plenty to say, all of it article and (what Severus had thought was) well-argued.

Now he just muttered, and gasped when Harry turned his head back over his shoulder and smiled temptingly at him. "Are you going to satisfy yourself any time soon?" Harry murmured, cocking his head. "Because I'm ready, but I understand that it might take you a little more preparation."

Severus's robes were indeed pooled on the floor around his feet, but his shirt was still clinging to his chest, and his trousers were yanked down enough that Harry could see his cock but not much else. Severus made another wordless noise at his taunt and shoved his trousers the rest of the way down to his knees. Then he must have used that spell that turned his nails into claws again, because he razored his trousers to shreds the way he had with Harry's clothes.

"Oh, good," Harry said. "I thought I was the only one whose clothes would get that treatment."

Severus _clambered _onto the bed with him. That was the only right word, and Harry would make sure to tell him that later. Later, because he did feel as though his own throat had gone dry and silent with the way that Severus was staring at him.

Severus started to say something else, but either it was always garbled or he knew it would be, because he shook his head after a moment and set about the serious business of pressing inside.

Harry enjoyed it, and either helped it along or got in the way by wriggling on the bed and aiming his arse in the general direction of Severus's cock. He didn't know which it was, but he enjoyed _that_, too, and it wasn't as though Severus was capable of telling him to stop right now.

But finally Severus's hands clamped his hips down, and Severus entered him with one rigid thrust. Harry muffled his cry into the pillow and wriggled back on Severus's cock. _Merlin, _that felt good.

"That is enough for you?" Severus whispered to him.

He'd recovered use of his voice, damn. But Harry thought he knew how to take it away again. He braced his elbows on the sheets, judged his angle, and then jerked straight backwards, onto Severus's cock.

Severus's voice was thick, too soft for curses, but he bent forwards over Harry's back and grabbed his shoulders instead of his hips. Harry sighed. There was a desperation to that grip that he hadn't felt before, even when Severus was probing at him with his fingers.

And the desperation was what he wanted. Because the burning in his belly wouldn't let him ignore it any longer, and he had to fuck himself with inadequate backwards movements until Severus got the hint and started actually moving.

Then Harry could put his face in the pillow again, and not hang onto anything, because Severus had hold of him.

Severus was muttering again, but this time, he was close enough that Harry could make out some of the words in between the thrusts. "Going to keep you close…want this…this is good…going to keep you close…"

Harry swallowed, and moved back to meet the thrusts again. No, he didn't have to, not when Severus was doing so much of the work, but he wanted to, the way that Severus wanted to be here, with him.

Because those words were ones that Harry had _wanted _to hear for the last few months, since before Midwinter. But they were so bloody hard to get out of Severus. The man barely said anything, apparently under the delusion that Harry should understand his silences.

But now, he was saying them, gasping them out warm and liquid against the back of Harry's neck, and his cock had sped up, pushing against Harry, pushing, _pushing, _until all the heat in his belly had become pleasure and Harry arched up again and came, this time, straightforward and open and honest and so much better than words.

It seemed to take Severus forever after that. He had slowed down when he felt Harry come, though, rocking on top of him with little movements for some reason. Harry glanced back at him, and found Severus staring at him, slightly crooked teeth showing where his lips were parted.

Harry smiled at him, and Severus lost the battle and sagged forwards and came, gripping Harry's shoulders still in a way that made Harry hiss.

When Severus was leaning on him, Harry clasped one of his hands and examined it complacently. It was the one burned from the shop that day, but Severus wasn't complaining now. Harry snickered to himself at that. Quite a feat to have brought Severus to a state where he couldn't complain. Harry felt pride nearly as strong as his orgasm.

"Mine," Severus whispered then.

Harry glanced back at him, wondering if he meant his hand. It wasn't like Harry was going to forget that was Severus's hand, which brought him so much more pleasure than his own. "What?"

"You," Severus said. "This. It—it may have been a false handfasting that gave this to me, but I'm going to keep it." And he dug in with the hand Harry had been holding, driving his fingers into Harry's palm.

Harry closed his eyes and nodded, because if he tried to say, "Yes," aloud at the moment, it would come out with a frankly embarrassing amount of enthusiasm.

But it seemed that Severus could understand silences as well as expect Harry to interpret them, because he grabbed Harry then, and twisted him around, and kissed him hard enough to seek out and swallow that _Yes_.

**Beltane Eve, 2005**

"I think Snape's trying to get your attention, mate."

Harry shrugged at Ron. "I know. But he's told me all that he needs to say. He knows that he doesn't want to continue the handfasting, and that's what he told me." He tilted his head back and let the Firewhisky work its way down his throat. He wouldn't drink tomorrow, the actual day of Beltane, because he didn't want to make an even _worse _decision than the handfasting had turned out to be. And he hadn't wanted to drink while Teddy was still awake. But nothing to stop him from doing it now.

"I don't think he agrees with that." Ron's voice was cautious, and he was eyeing the space over Harry's shoulder nervously.

Harry snorted a little. "Well, he can just fuck off—"

"You do not wish to continue that sentence, Harry."

Harry rolled his eyes as Ron made up a mumbled excuse about a potion brewing on the other side of the meadow, and fled. Coward. He couldn't even make up good excuses.

Harry didn't turn around, instead swallowing more Firewhisky and watching the bottle in his hands. Wasn't everyone supposed to have the freedom to get drunk after their lover had rejected them? But Severus didn't obey that rule, just like he didn't obey all the other rules. He shouldn't have been able to feel the vow that Harry had made at Mabon, according to the research Hermione had done on the subject, but yet, he had. He shouldn't have been tied to Harry in this ridiculous handfasting, but yet he was. He shouldn't have slept with Harry, but yet he had.

He shouldn't have let what had happened at Ostara get to him, but he had.

_Or was that me?_

"Look at me," Severus said. If Harry thought he had mastered the neutral tone after Ostara, it was nothing compared to Severus's.

He looked up, shaking his head. "You don't actually need to come over here and stand and stare at me," he said.

"I was right," Severus said. "You do not understand me."

Harry shut his eyes and rubbed his hand over his forehead, over the lightning bolt scar that he had thought less about in the past year than he ever had before. He wished he could attribute that to his intense studies to be a lawyer and the excitement of being able to do new things with Teddy as he got older, but he couldn't pretend like that, even to himself.

"And we've been through this again and again," Harry said. "How I can't expect words of affection from you, how I can never expect them from a _Slytherin_. I get it. I just—I just don't want to spoil this night by brooding on it. Okay? And I want to know when you're going to move out of the house."

"I cannot speak the words."

Harry nodded, his eyes down. He was the one who had taken that risk, like a good little Gryffindor, and he was the one who had been burned as a consequence. He really ought to have known better. He suspected that was what Severus would say.

"But I can show you."

Harry blinked in confusion through the moment before Severus's hand appeared under his nose, holding out a vial of potion so clear that it looked like Veritaserum. Harry took it and turned it around. No, it wasn't like Veritaserum, which flowed like water. Instead, this sloshed and clung to the sides of the vial. It was viscous and a deep silver, not really transparent. Harry raised his confused eyes to Severus's face.

"Will you take it?" That was a simple question, no threat, no demand. Harry didn't know that he had ever heard Severus utter one like it.

It was enough to get his cooperation.

Harry took a deep breath and downed the bloody potion in one go.

**Ostara, 2005**

"I—I wanted to talk to you about something."

Harry knew it was stupid to speak that way, to open _any _conversation with Severus that way. The stammering got his attention, sure, but it also meant that he was prone to pay exactly the wrong kind of attention. He turned from placing his cups in the cabinet—he no longer lined Harry's cups up the same way, thank Merlin—and nodded.

"I know that it's getting pretty near the end of our year," Harry said. He had promised himself that he would be utterly straightforward, which made it all the more humiliating that he had started by babbling. "And the handfasting hasn't been too bad lately, but it was horrible at first."

Severus was still, watching him. Not a nod. Not a flinch, either. Harry told himself that was good enough, and pressed ahead. He couldn't expect Severus to be all that enthusiastic about what he proposed, not when he had started off with such an unpromising beginning.

"But I was thinking that it might be different, now that we know how to make it work." He moved around the table in Severus's direction, needing to touch him. Sometimes he could feel, through the throb of Severus's pulse if nothing else, what Severus was experiencing, even when he wouldn't speak aloud. "That we could go on having a not-horrible handfasting even after it ends, now that we know."

He managed to touch Severus's wrist, but only for a moment as Severus turned to face him, his face strained and pale.

"You think that I would like to remain _bonded_," said Severus. "Bound. When I have suffered enough from being bound for a dozen lifetimes."

Harry opened his mouth, and stopped, blinking. He knew what Severus meant, but he had never directly compared the handfasting to the Dark Mark or the Unbreakable Vow or anything else like that before.

"I just—I mean, I thought this was different," said Harry. He thought about saying that he didn't think Severus would have slept with either Voldemort or Dumbledore willingly, but he had the sense not to say that a millisecond later. "Now that we know how to make it work. Now that it's not horrid, the way it was for the first few months."

"I will never want to remain bound," Severus said. "Liking to sleep in the same bed with you has nothing to do with that." He swept Harry with an expert, dismissive gaze, as if he could be all the more contemptuous of what was under Harry's robes now that he had touched and seen it. "I do not wish to continue the bond beyond the day it ends."

Harry swallowed. Then he said, "You think that you could just move out the day after it's done, like it's nothing?" Sometimes Severus couldn't say the words, but he could respond after Harry had stated the obvious.

"I would be moving out sooner, if it were possible," Severus said coldly, and turned towards the stairs.

Harry stared after him. What had gone wrong? Had it been worse than he thought? Had Severus simply been going along with what would get him free sex and—and maybe a nicer place to live than his flat, for as long as he had to? Had he decided that he might as well go along to get along?

And now Severus was walking away as if he owed Harry _nothing_, and his back told Harry nothing, either.

"You owe me more than that," Harry heard himself saying, his voice shockingly low. Severus paused on the top step, turning halfway around. Harry still couldn't see much more than his hair and the line of his jaw, but he didn't care. He was going to demand answers. "I don't care how hard it is for you to say. You can tell me."

"It was not at all hard to say." Severus glanced back down the stairs at him, musing, from the tone of his voice. "I did not ever enjoy being bound. That I might have enjoyed some of the consequences of it did not matter. I had already enjoyed those consequences once before the bond was completed, after all."

Harry straightened his back. "Does this have something to do with the day?" he had to ask. He had thought the first day of spring was propitious to ask Severus to extend the handfasting, but maybe the party Harry had talked about going to at the Weasleys' that evening had reminded Severus too much of Beltane. Or there could be some other bad memory associated with that day.

"It has nothing to do with the day, and everything to do with a dislike of being bound." Severus's voice had gone soft, too, but not soft enough that Harry didn't hear what was in it. He didn't have to shout down the stairs. "To know that when you do something, if you make another promise at the party tonight, I will have to watch those ribbons, those _bonds, _appear on my wrist again. I am done with being marked."

And he went up the stairs.

Harry sat down at the table. He actually didn't know how he had got back there from the bottom of the stairs, but it didn't matter. He sat there and traced his finger across the tabletop, then stopped when he saw how his finger shook.

He had misjudged, but he didn't know how.

_Fucking Slytherins._

* * *

"Harry, dear?"

That was all Molly needed to do, that and a kind smile and one hand on his arm, and Harry couldn't sit at the table the Weasleys had set up in the back garden and pretend to smile around at them anymore.

"I'm sorry, I can't," he muttered, and stumbled to his feet, working his way through the edge of the Warming Charm. Despite Molly's best intentions to treat this party as the real beginning of spring, it was still too cold to sit outside without the spells.

The trees were decorated with green ribbons, and Charlie had brought fresh fruit from Romania and piled it at the roots. And there were fairy lights woven among the ribbons, making a different, gentler light from the half-Muggle Christmas celebration, and Harry's eyes were blinded, and he stumbled on. He came up face first against a tree, and stood there, breathing little whistling breaths to himself.

He had been wrong. That was all. He had made a mistake.

Harry paused, and then stood back from the tree. Thinking about it like that made him feel better, strangely. If he thought that he hadn't put his heart on the line and been soundly rejected, or reached out to Severus and had his hand slapped away again, the way he had during those first incredible days after he had realized that Severus had survived Nagini's bite…

If he _didn't _think those things, if he just thought that he'd made a mistake the way he had so often in his relationship with Ginny, then it was easier to bear.

Harry nodded a little and looked up at the green ribbons and fairy lights dangling in front of him. All right. Okay. If he thought of it like this, and knew they would get through the last six weeks of the handfasting with a better understanding of each other, then it was actually better. Not healed, not fine, but better.

He had made a mistake, the way he'd thought he had when he first went up and asked Severus to sleep with him at Beltane. Severus had relented on that, but Harry didn't think he would relent on this. He'd spoken too casually about what not being bound meant to him, as if Harry should already know. He hadn't rejected Harry's offer at Beltane the same way.

So. No yielding. But Harry didn't have to be yielding himself, either.

The first day of spring was a good day for making promises to himself, too.

_I don't have to be bound any more than living with him and being faithful already entails._

* * *

When Harry got home that evening, he Summoned his pyjamas and toothbrush and a few other things that had migrated into Severus's bedroom and bathroom. They banged against the closed doors until Severus got up, swearing, and opened the doors to let them out.

And then Harry went on into his own bathroom, to brush his teeth and wash his face and do all the rest of the normal, nighttime routine, ignoring Severus's sour demands for an explanation. When it came to the point that he thought Severus might stalk inside, Harry simply shut his own door.

They just had to endure through the last part of this bond. And Harry was good at ignoring pain.

He would apologize to Severus for his mistake in the morning, and do his best to immerse himself in the long, complicated study of precedence that Sita Patil, his latest mentor, had been recommending that he do for two months now.

He could do this.

No one knocked on his door. Harry curled up under the blankets and went to sleep, and that was really the last time that they spoke to each other except for utter necessities, before Beltane.

**Beltane Eve, 2005**

"_Legilimens iter_."

When Harry heard Severus murmur the spell, he froze, because no matter how bad things had got between them, he couldn't actually believe that Severus was going to read his mind without permission.

But he remembered the potion, and noted the word added on to the last part of the spell, and held still, trying to trust. Until very recently, he had trusted Severus, after all.

He felt the spell briefly touch his mind, and then it seemed to turn and reverse and go back the other way. And as Harry met Severus's wide eyes, he fell into them, into his memories, the one place Harry couldn't have managed to go by himself, at least not without causing Severus all sorts of pain. The potion seemed to stir in his blood, reinforcing Harry's gentle drift through Severus's thoughts, caught in a current that guided him towards one place.

And that was the memory of Severus standing outside Harry's bedroom door, which must have been the night of Ostara, his hand raised to knock. Then he lowered it, and spent some time staring at the Dark Mark on his left arm, and the ribbons of light that manifested around the same wrist when he spent enough time looking at them.

Then he shook his head so hard and so bitterly that Harry nearly reached out to comfort him, before turning away.

Harry wondered why Severus had been so desperate to show him this, enough to brew a potion that must have been complicated. Harry _knew_ that he had turned away, no matter how bad he felt that night. Why emphasize it?

But then the memories swirled and settled again, and Harry saw himself and Severus lying in bed, Severus tracing one hand down Harry's cheek. Imbolc? It must be; Harry doubted he himself had looked that happy since then. Severus was staring at Harry's face as though the expression of joy would dissolve any second.

_I don't understand, _Harry thought. _If he liked being with me, why did he say what he did about the handfasting and the house? _

The memories shifted again, and this time Harry was confronting Severus in his bedroom, the Midwinter day that Severus had intended to steal off and leave him the "gift" of days alone. Severus's heart beat wildly, his blood glinted, and the warmth in the middle of his chest made Harry feel as if he was standing in the heart of the sun.

_This is what he couldn't speak aloud._

There was no voice of Severus's thoughts to answer him, but Harry was good at figuring out some things on his own.

And there was the night of Samhain in the garden, and there was the way that Severus had come out with that sun-like warmth frozen to moon-coldness in his chest, so afraid was he of having his reaching hand slapped away. And the way it had melted and burst into flame when Harry had smiled at him.

And the moment at Mabon when the blue ribbon had formed on Severus's wrist, and his second thought was the panicked one that he might have been bound further into this fucking handfasting, but the first thought was the panicked one that something might have happened to Harry.

And the memory of Harry choking on the floor of the lab, the same day as his birthday, and how willing Severus was to stay with him and make sure that he got no worse, if he could have, because this was a mistake, a mistake that had hurt someone who had helped him.

And the resentment at Midsummer that Harry wanted to go and celebrate with people who were loud and constantly moving and didn't understand the darkness and the silence and the stillness that Severus liked—the even-better-hidden resentment that Harry wanted to go to the Burrow instead of spending the day quietly in the house.

And the moment at Beltane, the _wonder _at Beltane, when Harry came up to him, giddy and prancing and gleeful, and offered something that was so far outside his dreams that Severus would never have thought to demand it.

All those memories sped and skimmed around Harry like swallows, and seemed to fly out through his ears, and he was back in his body in seconds, gasping, holding out his hands, and feeling Severus take his hands and hold them. Severus was looking at the ground. That didn't surprise Harry. He might be able to let his own warmth shine through his words and eyes, but Severus couldn't, and that was the way he was, the way Harry would have to accept that he was if he wanted to stay with him.

But for this moment, he still didn't know if he did. And this moment was a fulcrum, the turning of a year, and Harry was going to ask.

"Why?" Harry whispered. "Why not continue?"

And Severus heard him, and answered.

"Because I do not want to be bound," he said, and raised his head. His eyes were still defiant when they met Harry's, still unwilling. They probably always would be, Harry thought, and resisted the urge to reach out and stroke Severus's hair. That gesture wouldn't do right now, and anyway, their hands were clasped so tightly that it wouldn't work. "That does not mean that I do not wish to live with you. Of my own free choice. In a _place _of my own free choice."

"You don't want to be handfasted, and you want to live in your flat?" Harry asked. Severus had met him more than halfway. He could do his part by speaking the words that Severus could not.

Severus nodded, once, a hard, fast nod as though he wanted to shed the burden of the ideas as well as the words.

Harry reached out and finally separated their hands. Severus looked up at him, wary enough to retreat, Harry knew, if he said or did the wrong thing. The last six weeks of no more than common politeness had weakened Severus's trust in Harry as Severus's apparent disdain for him had weakened Harry's in return.

But Harry laid their wrists together, the ones that glittered with the magical ribbons of the handfasting. Severus stiffened, and sneered, but Harry reached out and hushed him simply by pulling the nearest edge of the ribbon, the gesture of pulling it off, and flinging it away. The ribbons didn't move—they were magical, and wouldn't, until the day after tomorrow—but Severus watched the gesture as intently as if they had.

And Harry left their wrists together, his own wordless declaration.

Severus leaned forwards slowly enough to give Harry time to get away, but Harry didn't. They had both made mistakes. They had both been sorry. But now was the time to go beyond that, to do more than that.

Harry met Severus's kiss, met it with his passion, and his relief, and his bounding delight. They weren't standing in a fire; they wouldn't be jumping over one; perhaps they wouldn't even share tonight on a bed of leaves, the way they had almost a year ago.

But it didn't matter. Standing there like that, with the brightness of understanding between them, was enough like standing in the heart of the sun for Harry.

**The End.**


End file.
